Confederate States of America
Overview
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
slave state
Slave state
In the United States of America prior to the American Civil War, a slave state was a U.S. state in which slavery was legal, whereas a free state was one in which slavery was either prohibited from its entry into the Union or eliminated over time...
s of the United States of America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
that had declared their secession from the U.S.
Secession in the United States
Secession in the United States can refer to secession of a state from the United States, secession of part of a state from that state to form a new state, or secession of an area from a city or county....
Secessionists argued that the United States Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
was a compact among states which each state could abandon without consultation, each state having a right to secede. The U.S.
Timeline
1861 American Civil War: In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from six break-away U.S. states meet and form the Confederate States of America.
1861 American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is elected the Provisional President of the Confederate States of America by the Confederate convention at Montgomery, Alabama.
1861 In Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis is inaugurated as the provisional President of the Confederate States of America.
1861 First national flag of the Confederate States of America (the "Stars and Bars") is adopted.
1861 Edward Clark becomes Governor of Texas, replacing Sam Houston, who was evicted from the office for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy.
1861 American Civil War: The war begins with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
1861 American Civil War: Richmond, Virginia is declared the new capital of the Confederate States of America.
1861 American Civil War: Richmond, Virginia is named the capital of the Confederate States of America.
1861 American Civil War: Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom issues a "proclamation of neutrality" which recognizes the breakaway states as having belligerent rights.
1861 American Civil War: The state of Kentucky proclaims its neutrality, which will last until September 3 when Confederate forces enter the state.
Encyclopedia
The Confederate States of America (also called the Confederacy, the Confederate States, C.S.A. and The South) was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern
slave state
s of the United States of America
that had declared their secession from the U.S.
Secessionists argued that the United States Constitution
was a compact among states which each state could abandon without consultation, each state having a right to secede. The U.S. government (The Union
) rejected secession as illegal. Waiting until after its army was fired upon on April 12–13, 1861 at the Battle of Fort Sumter
, the U.S. used military action to defeat the Confederacy. No foreign nation officially recognized the Confederate States of America as an independent country, but they did allow their citizens to do business with the Confederacy.
With the attack on Fort Sumter, Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to recapture lost federal properties in the South, the same number of arms the disunionists confiscated from US forts and arsenals in six seceding states prior to his inauguration. With the developing Federal policy of military action to suppress the rebellion, Arkansas
, Tennessee
, North Carolina
, and Virginia
also declared their secession and joined the Confederacy. All the main tribes of the Indian Territory
(later Oklahoma) aligned with the Confederacy, but efforts to secure secession in Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland failed in the face of federal military action and occupation of those states.
The Confederate government in Richmond
had an uneasy relationship with its member states, with some historians arguing the Confederacy "died of states' rights" because of the reluctance of several states to put troops under the control of the Confederate States government. Control over its claimed territory shrank steadily during the course of the American Civil War
, as the Union secured of much of the seacoast and inland waterways. During four years of bloody campaigning, the leading Confederate General Robert E. Lee
repelled all Union attempts to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, but the Confederates faced an insurmountable disadvantage in terms of men, supplies and public support.
The Confederacy effectively collapsed after Ulysses S. Grant
captured Richmond, Virginia
and Lee
's army in April 1865. Congress was not sure that white Southerners had really given up slavery or their dreams of Confederate nationalism, so it began a decade-long process known as Reconstruction. It sent the Thirteenth Amendment
to free slaves out to the states before Lincoln's assassination, expelled ex-Confederate leaders from office with Congressional Reconstruction, enacted civil rights
and voting rights legislation, and imposed conditions on the readmission of the state delegations to Congress. The war left the South economically devastated by military action and by the practice of using up resources to fight the war. The region remained well below national levels of prosperity until after World War II
.
in Southern slave states who refused to accept the results of the presidential election of 1860, in which the newly-formed, anti-slavery Republican Party won its first election. The secessionists, who mostly belonged to the Southern faction of the Democratic Party
, had been talking of secession for years prior to 1860. They believed the South to be under attack by abolitionists
and anti-slavery elements in the Republican Party
. Southern interests in the United States had been protected by doughface
presidents and congressmen, northern politicians with southern principles and patronage. The Supreme Court had been led by slaveholders, and its rulings had been favorable to its perpetuation. Nevertheless, during the campaign for president in 1860
, secessionists threatened disunion at Lincoln’s election, most notably by William L. Yancey. However there were no plans underway to set up a new country.
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With election, Lincoln explained that as president he could be voted out in four years. All since Andrew Jackson had been. He would have little direct power over the South except for the appointment of local postmasters. But Secessionists warned that Republican postmasters would resume allowing the mail to carry newspapers or pamphlets advocating freedom for all Americans, meaning freedom for slaves. They pointed out so had John Brown
, who had tried to foster widespread slave insurrection. The arguments of the disunionists emphasized states rights and warned against a strong national government—themes that came to haunt the Confederacy, with some historians arguing that it "died of states rights."
By 1860, sectional disagreements between North and South revolved primarily around the maintenance or expansion of slavery. Historian Drew Gilpin Faust
observed that "leaders of the secession movement across the South cited slavery as the most compelling reason for southern independence." Although this may seem strange, given that the majority of white Southerners did not own slaves, virtually every single white Southerner supported slavery because they did not want to be at the bottom of the social ladder. Related and intertwined secondary issues also fueled the dispute; these secondary differences included issues of free speech, runaway slaves, expansion into Cuba, and states' rights
. The immediate spark for secession came from the victory of the Republican Party and the election of Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 elections. Civil War historian James M. McPherson
wrote:
In what later became known as the Cornerstone Speech
, C.S. Vice President Alexander Stephens
declared that the "cornerstone" of the new government "rest[ed] upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth". In later years, however, Stephens made efforts to qualify his remarks, claiming they were extemporaneous, metaphorical, and never meant to literally reflect "the principles of the new Government on this subject."
Four of the seceding states, the Deep South
states of South Carolina,
Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas, issued formal declarations of causes, each of which identified the threat to slaveholders’ rights as the cause of, or a major cause of, secession. Georgia also claimed a general Federal policy of favoring Northern over Southern economic interests. Texas mentioned slavery 21 times, but also listed the failure of the federal government to live up to its obligations, in the original annexation agreement, to protect settlers along the exposed western frontier.
Texas further stated:
And again:
, calling for immediate secession, were opposed by two elements. "Cooperationists" in the Deep South would delay secession until several states went together, maybe in a Southern Convention. Under the influence of men such as Texas Governor Sam Houston
, delay had the effect of sustaining the Union. "Unionists", especially in the Border South, often former Whigs
, appealed to sentimental attachment to the United States. Their favorite was John Bell
of Tennessee.
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Secessionists were active politically. Governor William Henry Gist
of South Carolina corresponded secretly with other Deep South governors, and most governors exchanged clandestine commissioners. Charleston’s 1860 Association published over 200,000 pamphlets to persuade the youth of the South. The top three were South Carolina’s John Townsend’s “The Doom of Slavery”, “The South Alone Should Govern the South”, and James D.B. De Bow’s “The Interest of Slavery of the Southern Non-slaveholder.
Developments in South Carolina started a chain of events. The foreman of a jury refused the legitimacy of federal courts, so Federal Judge Andrew Magrath ruled that U.S. judicial authority in South Carolina was vacated. A mass meeting in Charleston celebrating the Charleston and Savannah railroad and state cooperation led to the South Carolina legislature to call for a Secession Convention. U.S. Senator James Chesnut, Jr.
resigned, and U.S. Senator James Henry Hammond
followed.
Elections for Secessionist conventions were heated to “an almost raving pitch, no one dared dissent” Even once respected voices, including the Chief Justice of South Carolina, John Belton O’Neall, lost election to the Secession Convention on a Cooperationist ticket. Across the South mobs lynched Yankees and (in Texas) Germans suspected of loyalty to the United States. Generally, seceding conventions which followed did not call for a referendum to ratify, although Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee did, also Virginia’s second convention. Missouri and Kentucky declared neutrality.
in Montgomery, Alabama on February 4, 1861. There the fundamental documents of government were promulgated, a provisional government was established, and a representative Congress met for the Confederate States of America.
The new Confederate President Jefferson Davis
, a former "Cooperationist" who had insisted on delaying secession until a united South could move together, issued a call for 100,000 states' militia to defend the new-born nation. Previously John B. Floyd
, U.S. Secretary of War under President James Buchanan
, had moved arms south out of northern U.S. armories. To economize War Department expenditures, Floyd and Congressional elements persuaded Buchanan not to put the armaments for southern forts into place. These were now appropriated to the Confederacy along with bullion and coining dies at the U.S. mints in Charlotte, North Carolina
; Dahlonega, Georgia
; and New Orleans.
In his first Inaugural Address
, Abraham Lincoln
tried to contain the expansion of the Confederacy. To quiet the rising calls for session in additional slave-holding states, he assured the Border States that slavery would be preserved in the states where it existed, and he entertained a proposed Thirteenth "Corwin Amendment
" under consideration to explicitly protect slavery in the Constitution.
The newly inaugurated Confederate Administration pursued a policy of national territorial integrity, continuing earlier state efforts in 1860 and early 1861 to remove U.S. government presence from within their boundaries. These efforts included taking possession of U.S. courts, custom houses, post offices, and most notably, arsenals and forts. But at the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter
, Lincoln called up 75,000 of the states’ militia to muster under his command. The stated purpose was to re-occupy U.S. properties throughout the South, as the U.S. Congress had not authorized their abandonment. The resistance at Fort Sumter signaled his change of policy from that of the Buchanan Administration. Lincoln's response ignited a firestorm of emotion. The people both North and South demanded war, and young men rushed to their colors. Four more states (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas) declared secessions, while Kentucky tried to remain neutral.
was a compact among states that could be abandoned at any time without consultation and that each state had a right to secede. After intense debates and statewide votes, seven Deep South
cotton states passed secession ordinances by February 1861 (before Abraham Lincoln
took office as president), while secession efforts failed in the other eight slave states.
Delegates from the seven formed the C.S.A. in February 1861, selecting Jefferson Davis
as temporary president until elections could be held in 1862. Talk of reunion and compromise went nowhere, because the Confederates insisted on independence which the Union strongly rejected. Davis began raising a 100,000 man army.
1. South Carolina
(December 20, 1860)
2. Mississippi
(January 9, 1861)
3. Florida
(January 10, 1861)
4. Alabama
(January 11, 1861)
5. Georgia
(January 19, 1861)
6. Louisiana
(January 26, 1861)
7. Texas
(February 1, 1861)
After the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter
April 12, 1861, and Lincoln's subsequent call for troops on April 15, four more states declared their secession:
8. Virginia
(April 17, 1861; referendum May 23, 1861)
9. Arkansas
(May 6, 1861)
10. Tennessee
(May 7, 1861; referendum June 8, 1861)
11. North Carolina
(May 20, 1861)
Kentucky declared neutrality but after Confederate troops moved in, the state government asked for Union troops to drive them out. Confederates tried to set up their own state government
, but it was driven out and never controlled Kentucky. The Union had a rump government
in Virginia, and when its western counties rejected the Confederacy the Unionists government approved the creation of West Virginia
, which was admitted to the U.S. as a state.
In Missouri, a pro-CSA remnant of the General Assembly
met on October 31, 1861, and although lacking a quorum in either house, passed an ordinance of secession
. However, this occurred after a standing constitutional convention declared the legislature and governor void after Federal troops marched on and took over the capital. The Confederate government was driven out of Missouri and never was in control of the state. Missouri never seceded and was not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation
. The standing State constitutional convention repealed slavery in Missouri before Federal constitutional amendments passed.
The Confederacy recognized the pro-Confederate claimants in both Kentucky and Missouri and laid claim to those states based on their authority, with representatives from both states seated in the Confederate Congress. Later versions of Confederate flags had 13 stars, reflecting the Confederacy's claims to Kentucky and Missouri, and the large numbers of soldiers they provided.
On April 27, 1861, President Lincoln, in response to the destruction of railroad bridges and telegraph lines by southern sympathizers in Maryland (surrounding Washington, D.C., on three sides), authorized General Scott to suspend the writ of habeas corpus
along the railroad line from Philadelphia to Baltimore to Washington.
Delaware
, also a slave state, never considered secession, nor did Washington, D.C. Although the slave states of Maryland
and Delaware
did not secede, citizens from those states did exhibit divided loyalties. Only Delaware among the slave states did not produce a full regiment to fight for the Confederacy. Delaware achieved the distinction of providing more soldiers by percentage than any other state, and overwhelmingly they fought for the Union.
In 1861, a Unionist legislature
in Wheeling, Virginia
, seceded from Virginia, eventually claiming 50 counties for a new state. However, 24 of those counties had voted in favor of Virginia's secession, and control of these counties, as well as some counties that had voted against secession, remained contested until the end of the war. West Virginia
joined the United States in 1863 with a constitution that gradually abolished slavery. According to military historian Russell F. Weigley, "Most of West Virginia went through the Civil War not as an asset to the Union but as a troublesome battleground..."
Confederate declarations of martial law checked attempts to secede from the Confederate States of America by some counties in East Tennessee
.
and Tucson
in the southern part of New Mexico Territory
(modern day New Mexico
and Arizona
) formed a secession convention, which voted to join the Confederacy on March 16, 1861, and appointed Lewis Owings
as the new territorial governor.
In July, the Mesilla government appealed to Confederate troops in El Paso, Texas
, under Lieutenant Colonel John Baylor
for help in removing the Union Army
under Major Isaac Lynde that had taken up position nearby. The Confederates defeated Lynde's forces at the Battle of Mesilla
on July 27, 1861. After the battle, Baylor established a territorial government for the Confederate Arizona Territory and named himself governor. The Confederacy proclaimed the portion of the New Mexico Territory
south of the 34th parallel
as the Confederate Arizona Territory on February 14, 1862, with Mesilla
serving as the territorial capital.
In 1862 the Confederate General Henry Hopkins Sibley
led a New Mexico Campaign
to take the northern half of New Mexico. Although Confederates briefly occupied the territorial capital of Santa Fe
, they suffered defeat at Glorieta Pass
in March and retreated, never to return. The Union regained military control of the area, and on February 24, 1863, set up the U.S. Arizona Territory
with Fort Whipple
as the capital.
Confederate supporters also claimed portions of modern-day Oklahoma as Confederate territory after the Union
abandoned and evacuated the federal forts and installations in the territory. The five tribal governments of the Indian Territory
– which became Oklahoma
in 1907 – mainly supported the Confederacy, providing troops and one general officer. On July 12, 1861, the newly formed Confederate States government signed a treaty with both the Choctaw
and Chickasaw
Indian nations in the Indian Territory. After 1863 the tribal governments sent representatives to the Confederate Congress
: Elias Cornelius Boudinot
representing the Cherokee
and Samuel Benton Callahan
representing the Seminole
and Creek people
. The Cherokee, in their declaration of causes, gave as reasons for aligning with the Confederacy the similar institutions and interests of the Cherokee Nation
and the Southern states, alleged violations of the Constitution by the North, claimed that the North waged war against Southern commercial and political freedom and for the abolition of slavery in general and in the Indian Territory in particular, and that the North intended to seize Indian lands as had happened in the past.
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Montgomery, Alabama
served as the capital of the Confederate States of America from February 4 until May 29, 1861. The naming of Richmond, Virginia
as the new capital took place on May 30, 1861.
Shortly before the end of the war, the Confederate government evacuated Richmond, planning to relocate farther south. Little came of these plans before Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Danville, Virginia
, served as the last capital of the Confederate States of America, from April 3 to April 10, 1865.
, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward
issued formal instructions in April 1861 to Charles Francis Adams
, the newly appointed minister to Great Britain:
However, if the British seemed inclined to recognize the Confederacy, or even waver in that regard, they would receive a sharp warning, with a strong hint of war:
The Union government never declared war, but conducted its military efforts under a presidential proclamation issued April 15, 1861, calling for troops to recapture forts and suppress a rebellion. Mid-war negotiations between the two sides occurred without formal political recognition, though the laws of war
governed military relationships.
Following the Battle of Fort Sumter, the Confederate Congress asserted on May 6, 1861:
Four years after the war, in 1869, the United States Supreme Court
in Texas v. White
ruled Texas' declaration of secession was legally null and void
. The court's opinion was authored by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase
. The court did allow some possibility of separation from the Union "through revolution or through consent of the States."
Jefferson Davis
, former President of the Confederacy, and Alexander Stephens, its former Vice-President, both penned arguments in favor of secession's legality, most notably Davis' The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government
.
and France
. The United States realized this as well and made it clear that diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy meant war with the United States – and the cutting off of food shipments into Britain. The Confederates who had believed that "cotton is king
" – that is, Britain had to support the Confederacy to obtain cotton – proved mistaken. The British had ample stocks to last over a year, and had been developing alternative sources of cotton (most notably India
and Egypt
) and were not about to go to war with the U.S. to try to get more cotton.
The Confederate government sent repeated delegations to Europe; historians give them low marks for their poor diplomacy. James M. Mason
went to London and John Slidell
traveled to Paris, but neither was officially received. Each did succeed in holding unofficial private meetings with high British and French officials but neither secured official recognition
for the Confederacy. Britain and the United States came dangerously close to war during the Trent Affair
(when the U.S. Navy seized two Confederate agents traveling on a British ship in late 1861), and it seemed possible that the Confederacy would see its much desired recognition. When Lincoln released the two, however, tensions cooled, and in the end the episode did not aid the Confederate cause.
Throughout the early years of the war, British foreign secretary Lord John Russell
, Napoleon III of France, and, to a lesser extent, British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston
, showed interest in the idea of recognition of the Confederacy, or at least of offering a mediation. Recognition meant certain war with the United States, and war would have meant loss of American grain, loss of exports to the United States, loss of huge investments in American securities, invasion of Canada, much higher taxes, many lives lost and a threat to British trade. Intervention was considered by the British government following the Second Battle of Bull Run
, but the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam
and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation
, combined with internal opposition, caused Britain to back away; the British government did allow blockade runners to be built in Britain and operated by British seamen.
No country appointed any diplomat to the Confederacy, but several maintained their consuls in the South whom they had appointed before the outbreak of war. In 1861, Ernst Raven
applied to Richmond for approval as the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha consul, but he held citizenship in Texas and officials in Saxe-Coburg-Gotha never saw his request; they strongly supported the Union. In 1863, the Confederacy expelled all foreign consuls (all of them European diplomats) for advising their subjects to refuse to serve in the Confederate army.
No nation ever sent an ambassador or an official delegation to Richmond. However, they applied principles of international law that recognized the Union and Confederate sides as belligerent
s. Both Confederate and Union agents were allowed to work openly in British territories. For example, in Hamilton, Bermuda
a Confederate agent openly worked to help blockade runner
s. Some state governments in northern Mexico negotiated local agreements to cover trade on the Texas border.
Pope Pius IX
caused a controversy during the war by writing a letter to Jefferson Davis in which he addressed Davis as the "Honorable President of the Confederate States of America." In doing so, the Pope appeared to informally (on a personal level) recognize that the CSA was a separate country. The Holy See
never released a formal statement supporting or recognizing the Confederacy, however.
, Navy
and Marine Corps
.
The Confederate military leadership included many veterans from the United States Army
and United States Navy
who had resigned their Federal commissions and had won appointment to senior positions in the Confederate armed forces. Many had served in the Mexican-American War (including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis), but some such as Leonidas Polk
(who had attended West Point
but did not graduate) had little or no experience.
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The Confederate officer corps consisted of men from both slave-owning and non-slave-owning families. The Confederacy appointed junior and field grade officers by election from the enlisted ranks. Although no Army service academy was established for the Confederacy, many colleges of the South (such as The Citadel
and Virginia Military Institute
) maintained cadet corps that were seen as a training ground for Confederate military leadership. A naval academy was established at Drewry’s Bluff
, Virginia in 1863, but no midshipmen graduated before the Confederacy's end.
The soldiers of the Confederate armed forces consisted mainly of white males aged between 16 and 28. The Confederacy adopted conscription
in 1862. Many thousands of slaves served as laborers, cooks, and pioneers. Some freed blacks and men of color served in local state militia units of the Confederacy, primarily in Louisiana and South Carolina, but their officers deployed them for "local defense, not combat." Depleted by casualties and desertions, the military suffered chronic manpower shortages. In the spring of 1865, the Confederate Congress, influenced by the public support by General Lee, approved the recruitment of black infantry units. Contrary to Lee’s and Davis’s recommendations, the Congress refused “to guarantee the freedom of black volunteers.” No more than two hundred black troops were ever raised.
in Charleston, South Carolina
. Federal troops of the U.S. had retreated to Fort Sumter
soon after South Carolina declared its secession on 20 December 1860.
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U.S. President Buchanan had attempted to re-supply Sumter by sending the Star of the West
, but Confederate forces led by cadets from The Citadel, fired upon the ship on Jan. 9, 1861, driving it away. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln also attempted to resupply Sumter. Lincoln notified South Carolina Governor Francis W. Pickens that "an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only, and that if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition will be made without further notice, [except] in case of an attack on the fort." However, suspecting just such an attempt to reinforce the fort, the Confederate cabinet decided at a meeting in Montgomery to capture Fort Sumter before the relief fleet arrived.
On April 12, 1861, Confederate troops, following orders from Jefferson Davis
and his Secretary of War, fired upon the federal troops occupying Fort Sumter, forcing their surrender. Nobody was killed in the battle, though two Union soldiers did die from an accidental explosion during the surrender ceremonies. After the war, Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens maintained that Lincoln's attempt to resupply Sumter was a disguised reinforcement and had provoked the war.
Following the Battle of Fort Sumter
, Lincoln called for the states to send troops to recapture Sumter and all other federal property that had been seized in the seven seceding states Lincoln issued this call before Congress could convene on the matter, and the original request from the War Department called for volunteers for only three months of duty. Lincoln's call for troops resulted in four border states deciding to secede rather than provide troops that would be marching into neighboring Southern states. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina joined the Confederacy, bringing the total to 11 states. Once Virginia had joined, the Confederate States moved their capital from Montgomery, Alabama
, to Richmond, Virginia
. All but two major battles (Antietam
and Gettysburg
) took place in Confederate territory.
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By 1862, the Union had taken control of New Orleans, and had gained control of the contested northernmost slave states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia). Two major Confederate incursions into Union territory in 1862, Lee's invasion of Maryland
and Braxton Bragg
's invasion of Kentucky were decisively repulsed, and both armies barely escaped capture.
Nevins (1960) argues that 1862 was the high water mark of the Confederacy, and that the failures of the two invasions were the same: lack of manpower, lack of supplies—there were hardly any new shoes or boots—and exhaustion after long marches. Weak national leadership meant that Davis's favorites like Bragg remained in command of an army he could not handle, and the disorganized overall direction stood in sharp contrast to the much improved organization in Washington.
With another 10,000 men Lee and Bragg might have prevailed, but their goal of gaining new soldiers failed because the border states did not respond to their pleas.
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By 1863 the Union held control of most of Tennessee; with the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 4 of that year, the Union gained complete control over the Mississippi River, cutting off the westernmost portions of the Confederacy (Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and the Oklahoma and Arizona Territories).
In 1864, the Union took Mobile, Alabama
, the last major port on the Gulf Coast, and by September 1864 Atlanta
fell to Union troops, paving the way for the March to the Sea
by William Tecumseh Sherman
's forces; he reached Savannah by the end of the year, then moved north into the Carolinas, devastating a wide swath of the Confederate heartland. The major defeat at the Battle of Nashville
in December destroyed the main Confederate forces in the west.
in February, but rejected Lincoln's invitation to return to the Union (which came with a suggestion the Union would buy the slaves). It was independence or nothing, but Lee's army was wracked by desertions and could barely hold on in the trenches around Richmond.
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When the Union broke through Lee's lines at Petersburg, the main strong point that controlled the capital, Richmond fell immediately. Lee raced west to escape, but was caught and surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia
at Appomattox, Virginia
on April 9, 1865, marking the end of the Confederacy.
Some high officials escaped to Europe but Union patrols captured President Davis on May 10; all remaining Confederate forces surrendered by June 1865. The U.S. Army took control of the Confederate areas and there was no post-surrender insurgency or guerrilla warfare
against the army, but there was a great deal of local violence, feuding and revenge killings.
Historian Gary Gallagher concludes: "The Confederacy capitulated in the spring of 1865 because northern armies had demonstrated their ability to crush organized southern military resistance....Civilians who had maintained faith in their defenders despite material hardship and social disruption similarly recognized that the end had come.... Most Confederates knew that as a people they had expended blood and treasure in profusion before ultimately collapsing in the face of northern power sternly applied."
argued that the Confederacy "died of states' rights." According to Owsley, strong-willed governors and state legislatures in the South refused to give the central government the soldiers and money it needed because they feared that Richmond would encroach on the rights of the states. Georgia's governor Joseph Brown
warned that he saw the signs of a deep-laid conspiracy on the part of Jefferson Davis to destroy states' rights and individual liberty. Brown declaimed: "Almost every act of usurpation of power, or of bad faith, has been conceived, brought forth and nurtured in secret session." He saw granting the Confederate government the power to draft soldiers as the "essence of military despotism."
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In 1863 governor Pendleton Murrah
of Texas insisted that his State needed Texas troops for self-defense (against Native Americans or against a threatened Union advance), and refused to send them East. Zebulon Vance, the governor of North Carolina, had a reputation for hostility to Davis and to his demands. North Carolina showed intense opposition to conscription, resulting in very poor results for recruiting. Governor Vance's faith in states' rights drove him into a stubborn opposition.
Historian George Rable wrote:
Echoing Patrick Henry
's "give me liberty or give me death" Stephens warned the Southerners they should never view liberty as "subordinate to independence" because the cry of "independence first and liberty second" was a "fatal delusion". As Rable concludes, "For Stephens, the essence of patriotism, the heart of the Confederate cause, rested on an unyielding commitment to traditional rights. In his idealist vision of politics, military necessity, pragmatism, and compromise meant nothing".
Despite political differences within the Confederacy, no political parties were formed. Historian William C. Cooper Jr. wrote that "at the birth of their new nation, Confederates, in the language of the Founding Fathers, denounced the legitimacy of parties. Anti-partyism became an article of political faith. Almost nobody, even Davis’s most fervent antagonists, advocated parties." This lack of a functioning two party system, according to historian David M. Potter, caused "real and direct damage" to the Confederate war effort since it prevented the formulation of any effective alternatives to the Davis administration's policies in conducting the war.
The survival of the Confederacy depended on a strong base of civilians and soldiers devoted to victory. The soldiers performed well, though increasing numbers deserted in the last year of fighting, and the Confederacy never succeeded in replacing casualties as the Union could. The civilians, although enthusiastic in 1861–62, seem to have lost faith in the future of the Confederacy by 1864, and instead looked to protect their homes and communities. As Rable explains, "As the Confederacy shrank, citizens' sense of the cause more than ever narrowed to their own states and communities. This contraction of civic vision was more than a crabbed libertarianism; it represented an increasingly widespread disillusionment with the Confederate experiment."
replicated the United States Constitution
verbatim, but it contained several explicit protections of the institution of slavery including provisions for the recognition and protection of negro slavery in any new state admitted to the Confederacy. It maintained the existing ban on international slave-trading while protecting the existing internal trade of slaves among slaveholding states.
In certain areas, the Confederate Constitution gave greater powers to the states (or curtailed the powers of the central government more) than the U.S. Constitution of the time did, but in other areas, the states actually lost rights they had under the U.S. Constitution. Although the Confederate Constitution, like the U.S. Constitution, contained a commerce clause
, the Confederate version prohibited the central government from using revenues collected in one state for funding internal improvements in another state. The Confederate Constitution's equivalent to the U.S. Constitution's general welfare clause
prohibited protective tariffs (but allowed tariffs for providing domestic revenue), and spoke of "carry[ing] on the Government of the Confederate States" rather than providing for the "general welfare". State legislatures had the power to impeach
officials of the Confederate government in some cases. On the other hand, the Confederate Constitution contained a Necessary and Proper Clause and a Supremacy Clause
that essentially duplicated the respective clauses of the U.S. Constitution. The Confederate Constitution also incorporated each of the 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution that had been ratified up to that point.
The Confederate Constitution did not specifically include a provision allowing states to secede; the Preamble spoke of each state "acting in its sovereign and independent character" but also of the formation of a "permanent federal government". During the debates on drafting the Confederate Constitution, one proposal would have allowed states to secede from the Confederacy. The proposal was tabled with only the South Carolina delegates voting in favor of considering the motion. The Confederate Constitution also explicitly denied States the power to bar slaveholders from other parts of the Confederacy from bringing their slaves into any state of the Confederacy or to interfere with the property rights of slave owners traveling between different parts of the Confederacy. In contrast with the language of the United States Constitution, the Confederate Constitution overtly asked God's blessing ("...invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God...").
|+ Confederate Executive, 1861–1865
Table of departments, officers and terms
|-
! scope="col" | Office
! scope="col" | Name
! scope="col" | Term
|-
! scope="row" | President
| Jefferson Davis
| 1861–1865
|-
! scope="row" | Vice President
| Alexander Stephens
| 1861–1865
|-
! scope="row" | Secretary of State
| Robert Toombs
| 1861
|-
! scope="row" |
| Robert M.T. Hunter
| 1861–1862
|-
! scope="row" |
| Judah P. Benjamin
| 1862–1865
|-
! scope="row" | Secretary of the Treasury
| Christopher Memminger
| 1861–1864
|-
! scope="row" |
| George Trenholm
| 1864–1865
|-
! scope="row" |
| John H. Reagan
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | Secretary of War
| Leroy Pope Walker
| 1861
|-
! scope="row" |
| Judah P. Benjamin
| 1861–1862
|-
! scope="row" |
| George W. Randolph
| 1862
|-
! scope="row" |
| James Seddon
| 1862–1865
|-
! scope="row" |
| John C. Breckinridge
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | Secretary of the Navy
| Stephen Mallory
| 1861–1865
|-
! scope="row" | Postmaster General
| John H. Reagan
| 1861–1865
|-
! scope="row" | Attorney General
| Judah P. Benjamin
| 1861
|-
! scope="row" |
| Thomas Bragg
| 1861–1862
|-
! scope="row" |
| Thomas H. Watts
| 1862–1863
|-
! scope="row" |
| George Davis
| 1864–1865
|}
The Constitution provided for a President of the Confederate States of America, elected to serve a six-year term but without the possibility of re-election. Unlike the Union Constitution, the Confederate Constitution gave the president the ability to subject a bill to a line item veto, a power also held by some state governors.
The Confederate Congress could overturn either the general or the line item vetoes with the same two-thirds majorities that are required in the U.S. Congress. In addition, appropriations not specifically requested by the executive branch required passage by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress. The only person to serve as president was Jefferson Davis
, due to the Confederacy being defeated before the completion of his term.
Provisional Congress
For the first year, the unicameral Provisional Confederate Congress
functioned as the Confederacy's legislative branch.
President of the Provisional Congress
Presidents pro tempore of the Provisional Congress
Sessions of the Confederate Congress
Tribal Representatives to Confederate Congress
{| align=right
|
|}
Confederate district courts were authorized by Article III, Section 1, of the Confederate Constitution, and President Davis appointed judges within the individual states of the Confederate States of America. In many cases, the same U.S. Federal District Judges were appointed as Confederate States District Judges. Confederate district courts began reopening in the spring of 1861 handling many of the same type cases as had been done before. Prize cases, in which Union ships were captured by the Confederate Navy or raiders and sold through court proceedings, were heard until the blockade of southern ports made this impossible. After a Sequestration Act was passed by the Confederate Congress, the Confederate district courts heard many cases in which enemy aliens (typically Northern absentee landlords owning property in the South) had their property sequestered (i.e., seized) by Confederate Receivers. When the matter came before the Confederate court, the property owner could not appear because he was unable to travel across the front line
s between Union and Confederate forces. Thus, the C.S. District Attorney won the case by default, the property was typically sold, and the money used to further the Southern war effort. Eventually, because there was no Confederate Supreme Court, sharp attorneys like South Carolina's Edward McCrady began filing appeals. This prevented their clients' property from being sold until a supreme court could be constituted to hear the appeal, which never occurred. Where Federal troops gained control over parts of the Confederacy and re-established civilian government, U.S. district courts sometimes resumed jurisdiction.
Supreme Court – not established.
District Courts – judges
in 1861, making him the first Postmaster General of the Confederate Post Office as well as a member of Davis' presidential cabinet. Through Reagan's resourcefulness and remarkable industry, he had his department assembled, organized and in operation before the other Presidential cabinet members had their departments fully operational. |accessdate=2010-11-17}} Biographical Directory of the United States|accessdate=2011-02-19}}
When the Civil War
began, the U.S. Post Office still delivered mail from the seceded states for a brief period of time. Mail that was postmarked after the date of a state’s admission into the Confederacy through May 31, 1861 and bearing US (Union) Postage was still delivered. After this time, private express companies still managed to carry some of the mail across enemy lines. Later mail that crossed lines had to be sent by 'Flag of Truce' and was only allowed to pass at two specific points: Mail sent from the South to Northern states was received, opened and inspected at Fortress Monroe on the Virginia coast before being passed on into the U.S. mail stream. Mail sent from the North to any of the seceded states passed at City Point
, also in Virginia, where it was also inspected before being sent on.
With the chaos of the war, a working postal system was more important than ever for the Confederacy. The Civil War had divided family members and friends and consequently letter writing naturally increased dramatically across the entire divided nation, especially to and from the men who were away serving in an army. Mail delivery was also important for the Confederacy for a myriad of business and military reasons. Because of the Union blockade, basic supplies were always in demand and so getting mailed correspondence out of the country to suppliers was imperative to the successful operation of the Confederacy. Volumes of material have been written about the Blockade runners who evaded Union ships on blockade patrol, usually at night, and who moved cargo and mail in and out of the Confederate States throughout the course of the war. Of particular interest to students and historians of the American Civil War is Prisoner of War mail and Blockade mail as these items were often involved with a variety of military and other war time activities. The postal history of the Confederacy along with surviving Confederate mail has helped historians document the various people, places and events that were involved in the American Civil War as it unfolded.
, and, to a lesser extent, tobacco
and sugarcane
. Local food production included grains, hogs, cattle, and gardens.
The 11 states produced $155 million in manufactured goods in 1860, chiefly from local grist-mills, and lumber, processed tobacco, cotton goods and naval stores
such as turpentine
. By the 1830s, the 11 states produced more cotton than all of the other countries in the world combined.
The Confederacy adopted a low tariff
of 15 per cent, but imposed it on all imports from other countries, including the Union states. The tariff mattered little; the Union blockade minimized commercial traffic through the Confederacy's ports, and very few people paid taxes on goods smuggled from the Union states. The government collected about $3.5 million in tariff revenue from the start of their war against the Union to late 1864. The lack of adequate financial resources led the Confederacy to finance the war through printing money, which led to high inflation.
The requirements of its military encouraged the Confederate government to take a dirigiste
-style approach to industrialization.
But such efforts faced setbacks: Union raids and in particular Sherman
's scorched-earth campaigning destroyed much economic infrastructure.
had seized most of the navigable rivers by 1862, making its own logistics easy and Confederate movements difficult. After the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, it became impossible for Confederate units to cross the Mississippi: Union gunboats constantly patrolled the river. The South thus lost the use of its western regions.
At the end of 1860, the Southern rail network was disjointed and plagued by break of gauge as well as lack of interchange. In addition, most rail lines lead from coastal or river ports to inland cities, with few lateral railroads. This made travel between adjacent states by rail difficult.
The outbreak of war had a depressing effect on the economic fortunes of the railroad system in Confederate territory. The hoarding of the cotton crop in an attempt to entice European intervention left railroads bereft of their main source of income. Many had to lay off employees, and in particular, let go skilled technicians and engineers. For the early years of the war, the Confederate government had a hands-off approach to the railroads. Only in mid-1863 did the Confederate government initiate an overall policy, and it was confined solely to aiding the war effort. With the legislation of impressment
the same year, railroads and their rolling stock came under the de facto control of the military.
In the last year before the end of the war, the Confederate railroad system stood permanently on the verge of collapse. There was no new equipment and raids on both sides systematically destroyed key bridges, as well as locomotives and freight cars. Spare parts were cannibalized; feeder lines were torn up to get replacement rails for trunk lines, and the heavy use of rolling stock wore them out.
s as paper currency in various denominations, much of it signed by the Treasurer Edward C. Elmore
. During the course of the war these severely depreciated and eventually became worthless. Many bills still exist, although in recent years copies have proliferated.
The Confederate government initially financed the war effort mostly through tariffs on imports, export taxes, and voluntary donations of coins and bullion. However, after the imposition of a self-embargo
on cotton sales to Europe in 1861, these sources of revenue dried up and the Confederacy increasingly turned to issuing debt
and printing money to pay for war expanses. The Confederate States politicians were worried about angering the general population with hard taxes. A tax increase might disillusion many Southerners, so the Confederacy resorted to printing more money. As a result inflation increased and remained a problem for the southern states throughout the rest of the war.
The Treasury also issued paper bonds in large numbers, and the Post Office produced a considerable number of postage stamps; both stamps and bonds (and especially bond coupons) remain readily available. The philatelic market regards as far more valuable the stamps placed on envelopes that were actually used during the war.
At the time of their secession, the states (and later the Confederate government) took over the national mints in their territories: the Charlotte Mint
in North Carolina, the Dahlonega Mint
in Georgia, and the New Orleans Mint
in Louisiana. During 1861, the first two produced small amounts of gold coinage, the latter half dollars. Since the mints used the current dies on hand, these issues remain indistinguishable from those minted by the Union.
However the four half dollars with a Confederate (rather than U.S.) reverse, mentioned below, used an obverse die that had a small crack. Thus "regular" 1861-O halves with this crack probably were among the 962,633 pieces struck under Confederate authority.
In 1861 plans also originated to produce Confederate coins. The New Orleans Mint produced dies and four specimen half dollars, but a lack of bullion prevented any further minting. A jeweler in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, manufactured a dozen pennies under an agreement, but did not deliver them for fear of arrest. Over the years copies of both denominations have appeared. More details and pictures of the original issues appear in A Guide Book of United States Coins
.
{| align=right
|
|}
The 11 Confederate states in the 1860 census had 297 towns and cities with 835,000 people; of these 162 with 681,000 people were at one point occupied by Union forces. Eleven were destroyed or severely damaged by war action, including Atlanta (with an 1860 population of 9,600), Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond (with prewar populations of 40,500, 8,100, and 37,900, respectively); the eleven contained 115,900 people in the 1860 census, or 14% of the urban South. Historians have not estimated what their actual population was when Union forces arrived. The number of people (as of 1860) who lived in the destroyed towns represented just over 1% of the Confederacy's 1860 population. In addition, 45 court houses were burned (out of 830). The South's agriculture was not highly mechanized. The value of farm implements and machinery in the 1860 Census was $81 million; by 1870, there was 40% less, worth just $48 million. Many old tools had broken through heavy use; new tools were rarely available; even repairs were difficult.
The economic losses affected everyone. Banks and insurance companies were mostly bankrupt. Confederate currency and bonds were worthless. The billions of dollars invested in slaves vanished. However, most debts were left behind. Most farms were intact but most had lost their horses, mules and cattle; fences and barns were in disrepair. Prices for cotton had plunged. The rebuilding would take years and require outside investment because the devastation was so thorough. One historian has summarized the collapse of the transportation infrastructure needed for economic recovery:
The first official flag of the Confederate States of America—called the "Stars and Bars" – originally had seven stars, representing the first seven states that initially formed the Confederacy. As more states seceded, more stars were added, until the total was 13 (two stars were added for the divided states of Kentucky
and Missouri
). However, during the Battle of Bull Run (or First Manassas) it sometimes proved difficult to distinguish the Stars and Bars from the Union flag. To rectify the situation, a separate "Battle Flag" was designed for use by troops in the field. Also known as the "Southern Cross", many variations sprang from the original square configuration. Although it was never officially adopted by the Confederate government, the popularity of the Southern Cross among both soldiers and the civilian population was a primary reason why it was made the main color feature when a new national flag was adopted in 1863. This new standard—known as the "Stainless Banner" – consisted of a lengthened white field area with a Battle Flag canton. This flag too had its problems when used in military operations as, on a windless day, it could easily be mistaken for a flag of truce or surrender. Thus, in 1865, a modified version of the Stainless Banner was adopted. This final national flag of the Confederacy kept the Battle Flag canton, but shortened the white field and added a vertical red bar to the fly end.
Because of its depiction in the 20th-century and popular media, many people consider the rectangular battle flag design as being synonymous with "the Confederate Flag", even though most were square, and none were ever adopted as Confederate national flags. The generic version of the banner familiar today was used as the Confederate Naval Jack and the Battle Flag of the Army of Tennessee as well as other units.
|- style="vertical-align: top;"
! scope="col" | Member State
! scope="col" | Flag
! scope="col" | Ordinance of Secession
! scope="col" | Date of Admission
! scope="col" | Under predominant
Union control
! scope="col" | Readmitted to
representation
in Congress
|-
! scope="row" | South Carolina
|
| Dec. 20, 1860
| Feb. 8, 1861
| 1865
| July 9, 1868
|-
! scope="row" | Mississippi
|
| Jan. 9, 1861
| Feb. 8, 1861
| 1863
| Feb. 23, 1870
|-
! scope="row" | Florida
|
| Jan. 10, 1861
| Feb. 8, 1861
| 1865
| June 25, 1868
|-
! scope="row" | Alabama
|
| Jan. 11, 1861
| Feb. 8, 1861
| 1865
| July 13, 1868
|-
! scope="row" | Georgia
|
| Jan. 19, 1861
| Feb. 8, 1861
| 1865
| 1st Date July 21, 1868;
2nd Date July 15, 1870
|-
! scope="row" | Louisiana
|
| Jan. 26, 1861
| Feb. 8, 1861
| 1863
| July 9, 1868
|-
! scope="row" | Texas
|
| Feb. 1, 1861
| March 2, 1861
| 1865
| March 30, 1870
|-
! scope="row" | Virginia
|
| April 17, 1861
| May 7, 1861
| 1865;
(1862/63 for West Virginia
)
| Jan. 26, 1870
|-
! scope="row" | Arkansas
|
| May 6, 1861
| May 18, 1861
| 1864
| June 22, 1868
|-
! scope="row" | North Carolina
|
| May 20, 1861
| May 21, 1861
| 1865
| July 4, 1868
|-
! scope="row" | Tennessee
|
| June 8, 1861
| July 2, 1861
| 1863
| July 24, 1866
|-
! scope="row" | Missouri
(exiled government
)
|
| Oct. 31, 1861
| Nov. 28, 1861
| 1861
| Unionist govt. appointed by Missouri Constitutional Convention 1861
|-
! scope="row" | Kentucky
(Russellville Convention)
|
| Nov. 20, 1861
| Dec. 10, 1861
| 1861
| Elected Union and unelected rump Confederate governments from 1861
|}
bisected the country, with the western half often referred to as the Trans-Mississippi
. The highest point (excluding Arizona and New Mexico) was Guadalupe Peak
in Texas
at 8,750 feet (2,667 m).
with mild winters and long, hot, humid summers. The climate and terrain varied from vast swamp
s (such as those in Florida
and Louisiana
) to semi-arid steppes and arid deserts
west of longitude 100 degrees west. The subtropical climate made winters mild but allowed infectious disease
s to flourish. Consequently, on both sides more soldiers died from disease than were killed in combat, a fact hardly atypical of pre–World War I conflicts.
had a population of fewer than 500 people. Cities were rare. Of the twenty largest U.S. cities in the 1860 census, only New Orleans lay in Confederate territory – and the Union captured New Orleans in 1862. Only 13 Confederate-controlled cities ranked among the top 100 U.S. cities in 1860, most of them ports whose economic activities vanished or suffered severely in the Union blockade
. The population of Richmond swelled after it became the Confederate capital, reaching an estimated 128,000 in 1864. Other large Southern cities (Baltimore, St. Louis
, Louisville
, and Washington, D.C.
as well as Wheeling
, West Virginia
, and Alexandria
, Virginia
) never came under the control of the Confederate government.
The cities of the Confederacy included most prominently in order of size of population:
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="margin: auto;"
|-
! scope="col" | #
! scope="col" | City
! scope="col" | 1860 population
! scope="col" | 1860 U.S. rank
| Return to U.S. control
|-
! scope="row" | 1.
| New Orleans, Louisiana
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 168,675
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 6
| 1862
|-
! scope="row" | 2.
| Charleston
, South Carolina
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 40,522
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 22
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | 3.
| Richmond
, Virginia
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 37,910
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 25
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | 4.
| Mobile
, Alabama
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 29,258
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 27
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | 5.
| Memphis
, Tennessee
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 22,623
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 38
| 1862
|-
! scope="row" | 6.
| Savannah
, Georgia
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 22,619
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 41
| 1864
|-
! scope="row" | 7.
| Petersburg
, Virginia
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 18,266
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 50
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | 8.
| Nashville
, Tennessee
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 16,988
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 54
| 1862
|-
! scope="row" | 9.
| Norfolk
, Virginia
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 14,620
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 61
| 1862
|-
! scope="row" | 10.
| Augusta
, Georgia
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 12,493
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 77
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | 11.
| Columbus
, Georgia
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 9,621
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 97
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | 12.
| Atlanta, Georgia
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 9,554
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 99
| 1864
|-
! scope="row" | 13.
| Wilmington
, North Carolina
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 9,553
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 100
| 1865
|}
(See also Atlanta in the Civil War
, Charleston, South Carolina, in the Civil War, Nashville in the Civil War, New Orleans in the Civil War
, Wilmington, North Carolina, in the American Civil War, and Richmond in the Civil War
).
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders sortable" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"
|-
! scope="col" | State
! scope="col" | Total
Population
! scope="col" | Total
# of
Slaves
! scope="col" | Total
# of
Households
! scope="col" | Total
Free
Population
! scope="col" | Total #
Slaveholders
! scope="col" | % of Free
Population
Owning
Slaves
! scope="col" | Slaves
as % of
Population
! scope="col" | Total
free
colored
|-
! scope="row" | Alabama
| 964,201
| 435,080
| 96,603
| 529,121
| 33,730
| 6%
| 45%
| 2,690
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Arkansas
| 435,450
| 111,115
| 57,244
| 324,335
| 11,481
| 4%
| 26%
| 144
|-
! scope="row" | Florida
| 140,424
| 61,745
| 15,090
| 78,679
| 5,152
| 7%
| 44%
| 932
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Georgia
| 1,057,286
| 462,198
| 109,919
| 595,088
| 41,084
| 7%
| 44%
| 3,500
|-
! scope="row" | Louisiana
| 708,002
| 331,726
| 74,725
| 376,276
| 22,033
| 6%
| 47%
| 18,647
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Mississippi
| 791,305
| 436,631
| 63,015
| 354,674
| 30,943
| 9%
| 55%
| 773
|-
! scope="row" | North Carolina
| 992,622
| 331,059
| 125,090
| 661,563
| 34,658
| 5%
| 33%
| 30,463
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | South Carolina
| 703,708
| 402,406
| 58,642
| 301,302
| 26,701
| 9%
| 57%
| 9,914
|-
! scope="row" | Tennessee
| 1,109,801
| 275,719
| 149,335
| 834,082
| 36,844
| 4%
| 25%
| 7,300
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Texas
| 604,215
| 182,566
| 76,781
| 421,649
| 21,878
| 5%
| 30%
| 355
|-
! scope="row" | Virginia
| 1,596,318
| 490,865
| 201,523
| 1,105,453
| 52,128
| 5%
| 31%
| 58,042
|- class="sortbottom" style="background: #f9f9f9; font-weight: bold;"
! scope="row" | Total
| 9,103,332
| 3,521,110
| 1,027,967
| 5,582,222
| 316,632
| 6%
| 39%
| 132,760
|}
(Figures for Virginia include the future West Virginia.)
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"
|-
! scope="col" | Age structure
! scope="col" | 0–14 years
! scope="col" | 15–59 years
! scope="col" | 60 years and over
|-
! scope="row" | White males
| 43%
| 52%
| 4%
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | White females
| 44%
| 52%
| 4%
|-
! scope="row" | Male slaves
| 44%
| 51%
| 4%
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Female slaves
| 45%
| 51%
| 3%
|-
! scope="row" | Free black males
| 45%
| 50%
| 5%
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Free black females
| 40%
| 54%
| 6%
|- style="background: #f9f9f9; font-weight: bold;"
! scope="row" | Total population
| 44%
| 52%
| 4%
|}
(Rows may not total to 100% due to rounding)
In 1860 the areas that later formed the 11 Confederate States (and including the future West Virginia) had 132,760 (1.46%) free blacks. Males made up 49.2% of the total population and females 50.8% (whites: 48.60% male, 51.40% female; slaves: 50.15% male, 49.85% female; free blacks: 47.43% male, 52.57% female).
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
slave state
Slave state
In the United States of America prior to the American Civil War, a slave state was a U.S. state in which slavery was legal, whereas a free state was one in which slavery was either prohibited from its entry into the Union or eliminated over time...
s of the United States of America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
that had declared their secession from the U.S.
Secession in the United States
Secession in the United States can refer to secession of a state from the United States, secession of part of a state from that state to form a new state, or secession of an area from a city or county....
Secessionists argued that the United States Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
was a compact among states which each state could abandon without consultation, each state having a right to secede. The U.S. government (The Union
Union (American Civil War)
During the American Civil War, the Union was a name used to refer to the federal government of the United States, which was supported by the twenty free states and five border slave states. It was opposed by 11 southern slave states that had declared a secession to join together to form the...
) rejected secession as illegal. Waiting until after its army was fired upon on April 12–13, 1861 at the Battle of Fort Sumter
Battle of Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina, that started the American Civil War. Following declarations of secession by seven Southern states, South Carolina demanded that the U.S. Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor. On...
, the U.S. used military action to defeat the Confederacy. No foreign nation officially recognized the Confederate States of America as an independent country, but they did allow their citizens to do business with the Confederacy.
With the attack on Fort Sumter, Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to recapture lost federal properties in the South, the same number of arms the disunionists confiscated from US forts and arsenals in six seceding states prior to his inauguration. With the developing Federal policy of military action to suppress the rebellion, Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
, Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
, and Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
also declared their secession and joined the Confederacy. All the main tribes of the Indian Territory
Indian Territory
The Indian Territory, also known as the Indian Territories and the Indian Country, was land set aside within the United States for the settlement of American Indians...
(later Oklahoma) aligned with the Confederacy, but efforts to secure secession in Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland failed in the face of federal military action and occupation of those states.
The Confederate government in Richmond
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
had an uneasy relationship with its member states, with some historians arguing the Confederacy "died of states' rights" because of the reluctance of several states to put troops under the control of the Confederate States government. Control over its claimed territory shrank steadily during the course of the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, as the Union secured of much of the seacoast and inland waterways. During four years of bloody campaigning, the leading Confederate General Robert E. Lee
Robert E. Lee
Robert Edward Lee was a career military officer who is best known for having commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War....
repelled all Union attempts to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, but the Confederates faced an insurmountable disadvantage in terms of men, supplies and public support.
The Confederacy effectively collapsed after Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
captured Richmond, Virginia
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
and Lee
Robert E. Lee
Robert Edward Lee was a career military officer who is best known for having commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War....
's army in April 1865. Congress was not sure that white Southerners had really given up slavery or their dreams of Confederate nationalism, so it began a decade-long process known as Reconstruction. It sent the Thirteenth Amendment
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, passed by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. On...
to free slaves out to the states before Lincoln's assassination, expelled ex-Confederate leaders from office with Congressional Reconstruction, enacted civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
and voting rights legislation, and imposed conditions on the readmission of the state delegations to Congress. The war left the South economically devastated by military action and by the practice of using up resources to fight the war. The region remained well below national levels of prosperity until after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
A “Revolution” in disunion
The Confederate States of America was created by secessionistsSecession in the United States
Secession in the United States can refer to secession of a state from the United States, secession of part of a state from that state to form a new state, or secession of an area from a city or county....
in Southern slave states who refused to accept the results of the presidential election of 1860, in which the newly-formed, anti-slavery Republican Party won its first election. The secessionists, who mostly belonged to the Southern faction of the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
, had been talking of secession for years prior to 1860. They believed the South to be under attack by abolitionists
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
and anti-slavery elements in the Republican Party
History of the United States Republican Party
The United States Republican Party is the second oldest currently existing political party in the United States after its great rival, the Democratic Party. It emerged in 1854 to combat the Kansas Nebraska Act which threatened to extend slavery into the territories, and to promote more vigorous...
. Southern interests in the United States had been protected by doughface
Doughface
The term doughface originally referred to an actual mask made of dough, but came to be used in a disparaging context for someone, especially a politician, who is perceived to be pliable and moldable...
presidents and congressmen, northern politicians with southern principles and patronage. The Supreme Court had been led by slaveholders, and its rulings had been favorable to its perpetuation. Nevertheless, during the campaign for president in 1860
United States presidential election, 1860
The United States presidential election of 1860 was a quadrennial election, held on November 6, 1860, for the office of President of the United States and the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War. The nation had been divided throughout the 1850s on questions surrounding the...
, secessionists threatened disunion at Lincoln’s election, most notably by William L. Yancey. However there were no plans underway to set up a new country.
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With election, Lincoln explained that as president he could be voted out in four years. All since Andrew Jackson had been. He would have little direct power over the South except for the appointment of local postmasters. But Secessionists warned that Republican postmasters would resume allowing the mail to carry newspapers or pamphlets advocating freedom for all Americans, meaning freedom for slaves. They pointed out so had John Brown
John Brown (abolitionist)
John Brown was an American revolutionary abolitionist, who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in the...
, who had tried to foster widespread slave insurrection. The arguments of the disunionists emphasized states rights and warned against a strong national government—themes that came to haunt the Confederacy, with some historians arguing that it "died of states rights."
Causes of secession
Historian Emory Thomas reconstructed the Confederacy's self image by studying the correspondence sent by the Confederate government in 1861–62 to foreign governments. He found that the C.S.A. had multiple self images:By 1860, sectional disagreements between North and South revolved primarily around the maintenance or expansion of slavery. Historian Drew Gilpin Faust
Drew Gilpin Faust
Catherine Drew Gilpin Faust is an American historian, college administrator, and the president of Harvard University. Faust is the first woman to serve as Harvard's president and the university's 28th president overall. Faust is the fifth woman to serve as president of an Ivy League university, and...
observed that "leaders of the secession movement across the South cited slavery as the most compelling reason for southern independence." Although this may seem strange, given that the majority of white Southerners did not own slaves, virtually every single white Southerner supported slavery because they did not want to be at the bottom of the social ladder. Related and intertwined secondary issues also fueled the dispute; these secondary differences included issues of free speech, runaway slaves, expansion into Cuba, and states' rights
States' rights
States' rights in U.S. politics refers to political powers reserved for the U.S. state governments rather than the federal government. It is often considered a loaded term because of its use in opposition to federally mandated racial desegregation...
. The immediate spark for secession came from the victory of the Republican Party and the election of Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 elections. Civil War historian James M. McPherson
James M. McPherson
James M. McPherson is an American Civil War historian, and is the George Henry Davis '86 Professor Emeritus of United States History at Princeton University. He received the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Battle Cry of Freedom, his most famous book...
wrote:
In what later became known as the Cornerstone Speech
Cornerstone Speech
The Cornerstone Speech was delivered extemporaneously by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens in Savannah, Georgia on March 21, 1861.The speech explained what the differences were between the constitution of the Confederate Republic and that of the United States, laid out the Confederate...
, C.S. Vice President Alexander Stephens
Alexander Stephens
Alexander Hamilton Stephens was an American politician from Georgia. He was Vice President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. He also served as a U.S...
declared that the "cornerstone" of the new government "rest[ed] upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth". In later years, however, Stephens made efforts to qualify his remarks, claiming they were extemporaneous, metaphorical, and never meant to literally reflect "the principles of the new Government on this subject."
Four of the seceding states, the Deep South
Deep South
The Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the pre-Civil War period...
states of South Carolina,
Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas, issued formal declarations of causes, each of which identified the threat to slaveholders’ rights as the cause of, or a major cause of, secession. Georgia also claimed a general Federal policy of favoring Northern over Southern economic interests. Texas mentioned slavery 21 times, but also listed the failure of the federal government to live up to its obligations, in the original annexation agreement, to protect settlers along the exposed western frontier.
Texas further stated:
And again:
Secessionists and conventions
The Fire-EatersFire-Eaters
In United States history, the term Fire-Eaters refers to a group of extremist pro-slavery politicians from the South who urged the separation of southern states into a new nation, which became known as the Confederate States of America.-Impact:...
, calling for immediate secession, were opposed by two elements. "Cooperationists" in the Deep South would delay secession until several states went together, maybe in a Southern Convention. Under the influence of men such as Texas Governor Sam Houston
Sam Houston
Samuel Houston, known as Sam Houston , was a 19th-century American statesman, politician, and soldier. He was born in Timber Ridge in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, of Scots-Irish descent. Houston became a key figure in the history of Texas and was elected as the first and third President of...
, delay had the effect of sustaining the Union. "Unionists", especially in the Border South, often former Whigs
Whig Party (United States)
The Whig Party was a political party of the United States during the era of Jacksonian democracy. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s, the party was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic...
, appealed to sentimental attachment to the United States. Their favorite was John Bell
John Bell (Tennessee politician)
John Bell was a U.S. politician, attorney, and plantation owner. A wealthy slaveholder from Tennessee, Bell served in the United States Congress in both the House of Representatives and Senate. He began his career as a Democrat, he eventually fell out with Andrew Jackson and became a Whig...
of Tennessee.
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Secessionists were active politically. Governor William Henry Gist
William Henry Gist
William Henry Gist was the 68th Governor of South Carolina from 1858 to 1860 and a leader of the secession movement in South Carolina.-Early life and career:...
of South Carolina corresponded secretly with other Deep South governors, and most governors exchanged clandestine commissioners. Charleston’s 1860 Association published over 200,000 pamphlets to persuade the youth of the South. The top three were South Carolina’s John Townsend’s “The Doom of Slavery”, “The South Alone Should Govern the South”, and James D.B. De Bow’s “The Interest of Slavery of the Southern Non-slaveholder.
Developments in South Carolina started a chain of events. The foreman of a jury refused the legitimacy of federal courts, so Federal Judge Andrew Magrath ruled that U.S. judicial authority in South Carolina was vacated. A mass meeting in Charleston celebrating the Charleston and Savannah railroad and state cooperation led to the South Carolina legislature to call for a Secession Convention. U.S. Senator James Chesnut, Jr.
James Chesnut, Jr.
James Chesnut, Jr. of Camden, South Carolina, was a planter, lawyer, United States Senator, a signatory of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America, and a Confederate States Army general...
resigned, and U.S. Senator James Henry Hammond
James Henry Hammond
James Henry Hammond was a politician from South Carolina. He served as a United States Representative from 1835 to 1836, the 60th Governor of South Carolina from 1842 to 1844, and United States Senator from 1857 to 1860...
followed.
Elections for Secessionist conventions were heated to “an almost raving pitch, no one dared dissent” Even once respected voices, including the Chief Justice of South Carolina, John Belton O’Neall, lost election to the Secession Convention on a Cooperationist ticket. Across the South mobs lynched Yankees and (in Texas) Germans suspected of loyalty to the United States. Generally, seceding conventions which followed did not call for a referendum to ratify, although Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee did, also Virginia’s second convention. Missouri and Kentucky declared neutrality.
Inauguration and response
The first secession state conventions from the Deep South sent representatives to meet at the Montgomery ConventionMontgomery Convention
The Montgomery Convention marked the formal beginning of the Confederate States of America. Convened in Montgomery, Alabama the Convention organized a provisional government for the Confederacy and created the Constitution of the Confederate States of America....
in Montgomery, Alabama on February 4, 1861. There the fundamental documents of government were promulgated, a provisional government was established, and a representative Congress met for the Confederate States of America.
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Finis Davis , also known as Jeff Davis, was an American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President for its entire history. He was born in Kentucky to Samuel and Jane Davis...
, a former "Cooperationist" who had insisted on delaying secession until a united South could move together, issued a call for 100,000 states' militia to defend the new-born nation. Previously John B. Floyd
John B. Floyd
John Buchanan Floyd was the 31st Governor of Virginia, U.S. Secretary of War, and the Confederate general in the American Civil War who lost the crucial Battle of Fort Donelson.-Early life:...
, U.S. Secretary of War under President James Buchanan
James Buchanan
James Buchanan, Jr. was the 15th President of the United States . He is the only president from Pennsylvania, the only president who remained a lifelong bachelor and the last to be born in the 18th century....
, had moved arms south out of northern U.S. armories. To economize War Department expenditures, Floyd and Congressional elements persuaded Buchanan not to put the armaments for southern forts into place. These were now appropriated to the Confederacy along with bullion and coining dies at the U.S. mints in Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the seat of Mecklenburg County. In 2010, Charlotte's population according to the US Census Bureau was 731,424, making it the 17th largest city in the United States based on population. The Charlotte metropolitan area had a 2009...
; Dahlonega, Georgia
Dahlonega, Georgia
Dahlonega is a city in Lumpkin County, Georgia, United States, and is its county seat. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 5,242....
; and New Orleans.
In his first Inaugural Address
Lincoln's first inaugural address
Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address was delivered by President Abraham Lincoln, on Monday, March 4, 1861, as part of his taking of the oath of office for his first term as the sixteenth President of the United States...
, Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
tried to contain the expansion of the Confederacy. To quiet the rising calls for session in additional slave-holding states, he assured the Border States that slavery would be preserved in the states where it existed, and he entertained a proposed Thirteenth "Corwin Amendment
Corwin amendment
The Corwin Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution passed by the 36th Congress, 2nd Session, on March 2, 1861, in the form of House Resolution No. 80...
" under consideration to explicitly protect slavery in the Constitution.
The newly inaugurated Confederate Administration pursued a policy of national territorial integrity, continuing earlier state efforts in 1860 and early 1861 to remove U.S. government presence from within their boundaries. These efforts included taking possession of U.S. courts, custom houses, post offices, and most notably, arsenals and forts. But at the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter is a Third System masonry coastal fortification located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The fort is best known as the site upon which the shots initiating the American Civil War were fired, at the Battle of Fort Sumter.- Construction :...
, Lincoln called up 75,000 of the states’ militia to muster under his command. The stated purpose was to re-occupy U.S. properties throughout the South, as the U.S. Congress had not authorized their abandonment. The resistance at Fort Sumter signaled his change of policy from that of the Buchanan Administration. Lincoln's response ignited a firestorm of emotion. The people both North and South demanded war, and young men rushed to their colors. Four more states (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas) declared secessions, while Kentucky tried to remain neutral.
Secession
Secessionists argued that the United States ConstitutionUnited States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
was a compact among states that could be abandoned at any time without consultation and that each state had a right to secede. After intense debates and statewide votes, seven Deep South
Deep South
The Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the pre-Civil War period...
cotton states passed secession ordinances by February 1861 (before Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
took office as president), while secession efforts failed in the other eight slave states.
Delegates from the seven formed the C.S.A. in February 1861, selecting Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Finis Davis , also known as Jeff Davis, was an American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President for its entire history. He was born in Kentucky to Samuel and Jane Davis...
as temporary president until elections could be held in 1862. Talk of reunion and compromise went nowhere, because the Confederates insisted on independence which the Union strongly rejected. Davis began raising a 100,000 man army.
States
Seven states declared their secession from the United States before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861:1. South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
(December 20, 1860)
2. Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
(January 9, 1861)
3. Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
(January 10, 1861)
4. Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
(January 11, 1861)
5. Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
(January 19, 1861)
6. Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
(January 26, 1861)
7. Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
(February 1, 1861)
After the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter
Battle of Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina, that started the American Civil War. Following declarations of secession by seven Southern states, South Carolina demanded that the U.S. Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor. On...
April 12, 1861, and Lincoln's subsequent call for troops on April 15, four more states declared their secession:
8. Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
(April 17, 1861; referendum May 23, 1861)
9. Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
(May 6, 1861)
10. Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
(May 7, 1861; referendum June 8, 1861)
11. North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
(May 20, 1861)
Kentucky declared neutrality but after Confederate troops moved in, the state government asked for Union troops to drive them out. Confederates tried to set up their own state government
Confederate government of Kentucky
The Confederate government of Kentucky was a shadow government established for the Commonwealth of Kentucky by a self-constituted group of Confederate sympathizers during the American Civil War. The shadow government never replaced the elected government in Frankfort, which had strong Union...
, but it was driven out and never controlled Kentucky. The Union had a rump government
Restored government of Virginia
The Restored Government of Virginia, or the Reorganized Government of Virginia, was the Unionist government of Virginia during the American Civil War. From 1861 until mid-1863 it met in Wheeling, and from 26 August 1863 until June 1865 it met in Alexandria...
in Virginia, and when its western counties rejected the Confederacy the Unionists government approved the creation of West Virginia
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
, which was admitted to the U.S. as a state.
In Missouri, a pro-CSA remnant of the General Assembly
Missouri secession
During the American Civil War, the secession of Missouri was controversial because of the disputed status of the state of Missouri . During the war, Missouri was claimed by both the Union and the Confederacy, had two competing state governments, and sent representatives to both the United States...
met on October 31, 1861, and although lacking a quorum in either house, passed an ordinance of secession
Ordinance of Secession
The Ordinance of Secession was the document drafted and ratified in 1860 and 1861 by the states officially seceding from the United States of America...
. However, this occurred after a standing constitutional convention declared the legislature and governor void after Federal troops marched on and took over the capital. The Confederate government was driven out of Missouri and never was in control of the state. Missouri never seceded and was not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War using his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them, with nearly...
. The standing State constitutional convention repealed slavery in Missouri before Federal constitutional amendments passed.
The Confederacy recognized the pro-Confederate claimants in both Kentucky and Missouri and laid claim to those states based on their authority, with representatives from both states seated in the Confederate Congress. Later versions of Confederate flags had 13 stars, reflecting the Confederacy's claims to Kentucky and Missouri, and the large numbers of soldiers they provided.
On April 27, 1861, President Lincoln, in response to the destruction of railroad bridges and telegraph lines by southern sympathizers in Maryland (surrounding Washington, D.C., on three sides), authorized General Scott to suspend the writ of habeas corpus
Habeas corpus in the United States
Habeas corpus , Latin for "you [shall] have the body," is the name of a legal action or writ by means of which detainees can seek relief from unlawful imprisonment...
along the railroad line from Philadelphia to Baltimore to Washington.
Delaware
Delaware
Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...
, also a slave state, never considered secession, nor did Washington, D.C. Although the slave states of Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
and Delaware
Delaware
Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...
did not secede, citizens from those states did exhibit divided loyalties. Only Delaware among the slave states did not produce a full regiment to fight for the Confederacy. Delaware achieved the distinction of providing more soldiers by percentage than any other state, and overwhelmingly they fought for the Union.
In 1861, a Unionist legislature
Wheeling Convention
The 1861 Wheeling Convention was a series of two meetings that ultimately repealed the Ordinance of Secession passed by Virginia, thus establishing the Restored government of Virginia, which ultimately authorized the counties that organized the convention to become West Virginia. The convention was...
in Wheeling, Virginia
Wheeling, West Virginia
Wheeling is a city in Ohio and Marshall counties in the U.S. state of West Virginia; it is the county seat of Ohio County. Wheeling is the principal city of the Wheeling Metropolitan Statistical Area...
, seceded from Virginia, eventually claiming 50 counties for a new state. However, 24 of those counties had voted in favor of Virginia's secession, and control of these counties, as well as some counties that had voted against secession, remained contested until the end of the war. West Virginia
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
joined the United States in 1863 with a constitution that gradually abolished slavery. According to military historian Russell F. Weigley, "Most of West Virginia went through the Civil War not as an asset to the Union but as a troublesome battleground..."
Confederate declarations of martial law checked attempts to secede from the Confederate States of America by some counties in East Tennessee
East Tennessee
East Tennessee is a name given to approximately the eastern third of the U.S. state of Tennessee, one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee defined in state law. East Tennessee consists of 33 counties, 30 located within the Eastern Time Zone and three counties in the Central Time Zone, namely...
.
Territories
Citizens at MesillaMesilla, New Mexico
Mesilla is a town in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 2,180 at the 2000 census...
and Tucson
Tucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...
in the southern part of New Mexico Territory
New Mexico Territory
thumb|right|240px|Proposed boundaries for State of New Mexico, 1850The Territory of New Mexico was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from September 9, 1850, until January 6, 1912, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of...
(modern day New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
and Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
) formed a secession convention, which voted to join the Confederacy on March 16, 1861, and appointed Lewis Owings
Lewis Owings
Dr. Lewis Sumpter Owings was a medical doctor and politician in the New Mexico and Arizona territories. He was chosen twice for the role of Provisional Governor for the territory of Arizona by conventions seeking to organize the territory-by both pre-Civil War Union and Confederate...
as the new territorial governor.
In July, the Mesilla government appealed to Confederate troops in El Paso, Texas
El Paso, Texas
El Paso, is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States, and lies in far West Texas. In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 649,121. It is the sixth largest city in Texas and the 19th largest city in the United States...
, under Lieutenant Colonel John Baylor
John Baylor
John Robert Baylor was a politician in Texas and a military officer of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War.-Biography:...
for help in removing the Union Army
Union Army
The Union Army was the land force that fought for the Union during the American Civil War. It was also known as the Federal Army, the U.S. Army, the Northern Army and the National Army...
under Major Isaac Lynde that had taken up position nearby. The Confederates defeated Lynde's forces at the Battle of Mesilla
Battle of Mesilla
The First Battle of Mesilla, fought on July 25, 1861 at Mesilla in what is now New Mexico, was an engagement between Confederate and Union forces during the American Civil War. The battle resulted in a Confederate victory and led directly to the official establishing of a Confederate Arizona...
on July 27, 1861. After the battle, Baylor established a territorial government for the Confederate Arizona Territory and named himself governor. The Confederacy proclaimed the portion of the New Mexico Territory
New Mexico Territory
thumb|right|240px|Proposed boundaries for State of New Mexico, 1850The Territory of New Mexico was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from September 9, 1850, until January 6, 1912, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of...
south of the 34th parallel
34th parallel north
The 34th parallel north is a circle of latitude that is 34 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane. It crosses Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, Asia, the Pacific Ocean, North America and the Atlantic Ocean....
as the Confederate Arizona Territory on February 14, 1862, with Mesilla
Mesilla, New Mexico
Mesilla is a town in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 2,180 at the 2000 census...
serving as the territorial capital.
In 1862 the Confederate General Henry Hopkins Sibley
Henry Hopkins Sibley
Henry Hopkins Sibley was a brigadier general during the American Civil War, leading the Confederate States Army in the New Mexico Territory. His attempt to gain control of trails to California was defeated at the Battle of Glorieta Pass...
led a New Mexico Campaign
New Mexico Campaign
The New Mexico Campaign was a military operation of the American Civil War from February to April 1862 in which Confederate Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley invaded the northern New Mexico Territory in an attempt to gain control of the Southwest, including the gold fields of Colorado and the...
to take the northern half of New Mexico. Although Confederates briefly occupied the territorial capital of Santa Fe
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...
, they suffered defeat at Glorieta Pass
Glorieta Pass
Glorieta Pass is a high mountain pass in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico. The pass is at a strategic location near at the southern end of the Sangre de Cristos in east central Santa Fe County southeast of the city of Santa Fe.Historically, the pass provided the most direct...
in March and retreated, never to return. The Union regained military control of the area, and on February 24, 1863, set up the U.S. Arizona Territory
Arizona Territory
The Territory of Arizona was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from February 24, 1863 until February 14, 1912, when it was admitted to the Union as the 48th state....
with Fort Whipple
Fort Whipple, Arizona
Fort Whipple was a U.S. Army post which served as Arizona Territory's capital prior to the founding of Prescott, Arizona. The post was founded by Edward Banker Willis in January 1864 in Chino Valley, Arizona, but was moved in May 1864 to Granite Creek near the present day location of Prescott. ...
as the capital.
Confederate supporters also claimed portions of modern-day Oklahoma as Confederate territory after the Union
Union (American Civil War)
During the American Civil War, the Union was a name used to refer to the federal government of the United States, which was supported by the twenty free states and five border slave states. It was opposed by 11 southern slave states that had declared a secession to join together to form the...
abandoned and evacuated the federal forts and installations in the territory. The five tribal governments of the Indian Territory
Indian Territory
The Indian Territory, also known as the Indian Territories and the Indian Country, was land set aside within the United States for the settlement of American Indians...
– which became Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
in 1907 – mainly supported the Confederacy, providing troops and one general officer. On July 12, 1861, the newly formed Confederate States government signed a treaty with both the Choctaw
Choctaw
The Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
and Chickasaw
Chickasaw
The Chickasaw are Native American people originally from the region that would become the Southeastern United States...
Indian nations in the Indian Territory. After 1863 the tribal governments sent representatives to the Confederate Congress
Congress of the Confederate States
The Congress of the Confederate States was the legislative body of the Confederate States of America, existing during the American Civil War between 1861 and 1865...
: Elias Cornelius Boudinot
Elias Cornelius Boudinot
Elias Cornelius Boudinot was a delegate to the Arkansas secession convention, a colonel in the Confederate States Army, and a territorial representative in the Confederate Congress.-Life:...
representing the Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
and Samuel Benton Callahan
Samuel Benton Callahan
Samuel Benton Callahan was a Confederate politician during the American Civil War.Samuel Callahan was born in Mobile, Alabama, as a member of the Creek tribe. He represented the Creek and Seminole nations in the Second Confederate Congress.-Notes:http://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/5303...
representing the Seminole
Seminole
The Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida, who now reside primarily in that state and Oklahoma. The Seminole nation emerged in a process of ethnogenesis out of groups of Native Americans, most significantly Creeks from what is now Georgia and Alabama, who settled in Florida in...
and Creek people
Creek people
The Muscogee , also known as the Creek or Creeks, are a Native American people traditionally from the southeastern United States. Mvskoke is their name in traditional spelling. The modern Muscogee live primarily in Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida...
. The Cherokee, in their declaration of causes, gave as reasons for aligning with the Confederacy the similar institutions and interests of the Cherokee Nation
Cherokee Nation (19th century)
The Cherokee Nation of the 19th century —an historic entity —was a legal, autonomous, tribal government in North America existing from 1794–1906. Often referred to simply as The Nation by its inhabitants, it should not be confused with what is known today as the "modern" Cherokee Nation...
and the Southern states, alleged violations of the Constitution by the North, claimed that the North waged war against Southern commercial and political freedom and for the abolition of slavery in general and in the Indian Territory in particular, and that the North intended to seize Indian lands as had happened in the past.
Capitals
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Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is located on the Alabama River southeast of the center of the state, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2010 census, Montgomery had a population of 205,764 making it the second-largest city...
served as the capital of the Confederate States of America from February 4 until May 29, 1861. The naming of Richmond, Virginia
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
as the new capital took place on May 30, 1861.
Shortly before the end of the war, the Confederate government evacuated Richmond, planning to relocate farther south. Little came of these plans before Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Danville, Virginia
Danville, Virginia
Danville is an independent city in Virginia, United States, bounded by Pittsylvania County, Virginia and Caswell County, North Carolina. It was the last capital of the Confederate States of America. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the city of Danville with Pittsylvania county for...
, served as the last capital of the Confederate States of America, from April 3 to April 10, 1865.
United States, a foreign power
During the four years of its existence, the Confederate States of America asserted its independence and appointed dozens of diplomatic agents abroad. The United States government, by contrast, regarded the Southern states as states in rebellion and refused any formal recognition of their status. Thus, even before the Battle of Fort SumterBattle of Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina, that started the American Civil War. Following declarations of secession by seven Southern states, South Carolina demanded that the U.S. Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor. On...
, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward
William H. Seward
William Henry Seward, Sr. was the 12th Governor of New York, United States Senator and the United States Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson...
issued formal instructions in April 1861 to Charles Francis Adams
Charles Francis Adams, Sr.
Charles Francis Adams, Sr. was an American lawyer, politician, diplomat and writer. He was the grandson of President John Adams and Abigail Adams and the son of President John Quincy Adams and Louisa Adams....
, the newly appointed minister to Great Britain:
However, if the British seemed inclined to recognize the Confederacy, or even waver in that regard, they would receive a sharp warning, with a strong hint of war:
The Union government never declared war, but conducted its military efforts under a presidential proclamation issued April 15, 1861, calling for troops to recapture forts and suppress a rebellion. Mid-war negotiations between the two sides occurred without formal political recognition, though the laws of war
Laws of war
The law of war is a body of law concerning acceptable justifications to engage in war and the limits to acceptable wartime conduct...
governed military relationships.
Following the Battle of Fort Sumter, the Confederate Congress asserted on May 6, 1861:
Four years after the war, in 1869, the United States Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
in Texas v. White
Texas v. White
Texas v. White, was a significant case argued before the United States Supreme Court in 1869. The case involved a claim by the Reconstruction government of Texas that United States bonds owned by Texas since 1850 had been illegally sold by the Confederate state legislature during the American...
ruled Texas' declaration of secession was legally null and void
Void (law)
In law, void means of no legal effect. An action, document or transaction which is void is of no legal effect whatsoever: an absolute nullity - the law treats it as if it had never existed or happened....
. The court's opinion was authored by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase
Salmon P. Chase
Salmon Portland Chase was an American politician and jurist who served as U.S. Senator from Ohio and the 23rd Governor of Ohio; as U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Abraham Lincoln; and as the sixth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.Chase was one of the most prominent members...
. The court did allow some possibility of separation from the Union "through revolution or through consent of the States."
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Finis Davis , also known as Jeff Davis, was an American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President for its entire history. He was born in Kentucky to Samuel and Jane Davis...
, former President of the Confederacy, and Alexander Stephens, its former Vice-President, both penned arguments in favor of secession's legality, most notably Davis' The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government
The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government
The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government is a book written by Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Davis wrote the book as a straightforward history of the Confederate States of America and as an apologia for the causes that he...
.
International diplomacy
Once the war with the United States began, the Confederacy pinned its hopes for survival on military intervention by BritainUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
and France
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...
. The United States realized this as well and made it clear that diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy meant war with the United States – and the cutting off of food shipments into Britain. The Confederates who had believed that "cotton is king
King Cotton
King Cotton was a slogan used by southerners to support secession from the United States by arguing cotton exports would make an independent Confederacy economically prosperous, and—more important—would force Great Britain and France to support the Confederacy because their industrial economy...
" – that is, Britain had to support the Confederacy to obtain cotton – proved mistaken. The British had ample stocks to last over a year, and had been developing alternative sources of cotton (most notably India
British Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...
and Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
) and were not about to go to war with the U.S. to try to get more cotton.
The Confederate government sent repeated delegations to Europe; historians give them low marks for their poor diplomacy. James M. Mason
James M. Mason
James Murray Mason was a United States Representative and United States Senator from Virginia. He was a grandson of George Mason and represented the Confederate States of America as appointed commissioner of the Confederacy to the United Kingdom and France between 1861 and 1865 during the American...
went to London and John Slidell
John Slidell
John Slidell was an American politician, lawyer and businessman. A native of New York, Slidell moved to Louisiana as a young man and became a staunch defender of southern rights as a U.S. Representative and Senator...
traveled to Paris, but neither was officially received. Each did succeed in holding unofficial private meetings with high British and French officials but neither secured official recognition
Diplomatic recognition
Diplomatic recognition in international law is a unilateral political act with domestic and international legal consequences, whereby a state acknowledges an act or status of another state or government in control of a state...
for the Confederacy. Britain and the United States came dangerously close to war during the Trent Affair
Trent affair
The Trent Affair, also known as the Mason and Slidell Affair, was an international diplomatic incident that occurred during the American Civil War...
(when the U.S. Navy seized two Confederate agents traveling on a British ship in late 1861), and it seemed possible that the Confederacy would see its much desired recognition. When Lincoln released the two, however, tensions cooled, and in the end the episode did not aid the Confederate cause.
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, KG, GCMG, PC , known as Lord John Russell before 1861, was an English Whig and Liberal politician who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century....
, Napoleon III of France, and, to a lesser extent, British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, KG, GCB, PC , known popularly as Lord Palmerston, was a British statesman who served twice as Prime Minister in the mid-19th century...
, showed interest in the idea of recognition of the Confederacy, or at least of offering a mediation. Recognition meant certain war with the United States, and war would have meant loss of American grain, loss of exports to the United States, loss of huge investments in American securities, invasion of Canada, much higher taxes, many lives lost and a threat to British trade. Intervention was considered by the British government following the Second Battle of Bull Run
Second Battle of Bull Run
The Second Battle of Bull Run or Second Manassas was fought August 28–30, 1862, as part of the American Civil War. It was the culmination of an offensive campaign waged by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia against Union Maj. Gen...
, but the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam
Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam , fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek, as part of the Maryland Campaign, was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Northern soil. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000...
and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War using his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them, with nearly...
, combined with internal opposition, caused Britain to back away; the British government did allow blockade runners to be built in Britain and operated by British seamen.
No country appointed any diplomat to the Confederacy, but several maintained their consuls in the South whom they had appointed before the outbreak of war. In 1861, Ernst Raven
Ernst Raven
Ernst or Ernest Raven was an immigrant from Germany who became a prominent resident of Texas; he served as consul for the German Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in the State of Texas during the American Civil War....
applied to Richmond for approval as the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha consul, but he held citizenship in Texas and officials in Saxe-Coburg-Gotha never saw his request; they strongly supported the Union. In 1863, the Confederacy expelled all foreign consuls (all of them European diplomats) for advising their subjects to refuse to serve in the Confederate army.
No nation ever sent an ambassador or an official delegation to Richmond. However, they applied principles of international law that recognized the Union and Confederate sides as belligerent
Belligerent
A belligerent is an individual, group, country or other entity which acts in a hostile manner, such as engaging in combat. Belligerent comes from Latin, literally meaning "to wage war"...
s. Both Confederate and Union agents were allowed to work openly in British territories. For example, in Hamilton, Bermuda
Hamilton, Bermuda
Hamilton is the capital of the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda. It is the territory's financial centre and a major port and tourist destination.-Geography:...
a Confederate agent openly worked to help blockade runner
Blockade runner
A blockade runner is usually a lighter weight ship used for evading a naval blockade of a port or strait, as opposed to confronting the blockaders to break the blockade. Very often blockade running is done in order to transport cargo, for example to bring food or arms to a blockaded city...
s. Some state governments in northern Mexico negotiated local agreements to cover trade on the Texas border.
Pope Pius IX
Pope Pius IX
Blessed Pope Pius IX , born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, was the longest-reigning elected Pope in the history of the Catholic Church, serving from 16 June 1846 until his death, a period of nearly 32 years. During his pontificate, he convened the First Vatican Council in 1869, which decreed papal...
caused a controversy during the war by writing a letter to Jefferson Davis in which he addressed Davis as the "Honorable President of the Confederate States of America." In doing so, the Pope appeared to informally (on a personal level) recognize that the CSA was a separate country. The Holy See
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
never released a formal statement supporting or recognizing the Confederacy, however.
Armed forces
The military armed forces of the Confederacy comprised three branches: ArmyConfederate States Army
The Confederate States Army was the army of the Confederate States of America while the Confederacy existed during the American Civil War. On February 8, 1861, delegates from the seven Deep South states which had already declared their secession from the United States of America adopted the...
, Navy
Confederate States Navy
The Confederate States Navy was the naval branch of the Confederate States armed forces established by an act of the Confederate Congress on February 21, 1861. It was responsible for Confederate naval operations during the American Civil War...
and Marine Corps
Confederate States Marine Corps
The Confederate States Marine Corps , a branch of the Confederate States Navy, was established by an act of the Congress of the Confederate States on March 16, 1861. The CSMC's manpower was initially authorized at 45 officers and 944 enlisted men, and was increased on September 24, 1862 to 1026...
.
The Confederate military leadership included many veterans from the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
and United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
who had resigned their Federal commissions and had won appointment to senior positions in the Confederate armed forces. Many had served in the Mexican-American War (including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis), but some such as Leonidas Polk
Leonidas Polk
Leonidas Polk was a Confederate general in the American Civil War who was once a planter in Maury County, Tennessee, and a second cousin of President James K. Polk...
(who had attended West Point
United States Military Academy
The United States Military Academy at West Point is a four-year coeducational federal service academy located at West Point, New York. The academy sits on scenic high ground overlooking the Hudson River, north of New York City...
but did not graduate) had little or no experience.
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The Confederate officer corps consisted of men from both slave-owning and non-slave-owning families. The Confederacy appointed junior and field grade officers by election from the enlisted ranks. Although no Army service academy was established for the Confederacy, many colleges of the South (such as The Citadel
The Citadel (military college)
The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, also known simply as The Citadel, is a state-supported, comprehensive college located in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. It is one of the six senior military colleges in the United States...
and Virginia Military Institute
Virginia Military Institute
The Virginia Military Institute , located in Lexington, Virginia, is the oldest state-supported military college and one of six senior military colleges in the United States. Unlike any other military college in the United States—and in keeping with its founding principles—all VMI students are...
) maintained cadet corps that were seen as a training ground for Confederate military leadership. A naval academy was established at Drewry’s Bluff
Drewry’s Bluff
Drewry's Bluff is located in northeastern Chesterfield County, Virginia in the United States. It was the site of Confederate Fort Darling during the American Civil War. It was named for a local landowner, Confederate Captain Augustus H...
, Virginia in 1863, but no midshipmen graduated before the Confederacy's end.
The soldiers of the Confederate armed forces consisted mainly of white males aged between 16 and 28. The Confederacy adopted conscription
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
in 1862. Many thousands of slaves served as laborers, cooks, and pioneers. Some freed blacks and men of color served in local state militia units of the Confederacy, primarily in Louisiana and South Carolina, but their officers deployed them for "local defense, not combat." Depleted by casualties and desertions, the military suffered chronic manpower shortages. In the spring of 1865, the Confederate Congress, influenced by the public support by General Lee, approved the recruitment of black infantry units. Contrary to Lee’s and Davis’s recommendations, the Congress refused “to guarantee the freedom of black volunteers.” No more than two hundred black troops were ever raised.
Victories: 1861
The American Civil War broke out in April 1861 with the Battle of Fort SumterBattle of Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina, that started the American Civil War. Following declarations of secession by seven Southern states, South Carolina demanded that the U.S. Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor. On...
in Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...
. Federal troops of the U.S. had retreated to Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter is a Third System masonry coastal fortification located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The fort is best known as the site upon which the shots initiating the American Civil War were fired, at the Battle of Fort Sumter.- Construction :...
soon after South Carolina declared its secession on 20 December 1860.
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U.S. President Buchanan had attempted to re-supply Sumter by sending the Star of the West
Star of the West
The Star of the West was a civilian steamship hired by the United States government to transport military supplies and reinforcements to the garrison of Fort Sumter, but was fired on by Confederates in its effort to do so at the dawning of the American Civil War...
, but Confederate forces led by cadets from The Citadel, fired upon the ship on Jan. 9, 1861, driving it away. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln also attempted to resupply Sumter. Lincoln notified South Carolina Governor Francis W. Pickens that "an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only, and that if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition will be made without further notice, [except] in case of an attack on the fort." However, suspecting just such an attempt to reinforce the fort, the Confederate cabinet decided at a meeting in Montgomery to capture Fort Sumter before the relief fleet arrived.
On April 12, 1861, Confederate troops, following orders from Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Finis Davis , also known as Jeff Davis, was an American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President for its entire history. He was born in Kentucky to Samuel and Jane Davis...
and his Secretary of War, fired upon the federal troops occupying Fort Sumter, forcing their surrender. Nobody was killed in the battle, though two Union soldiers did die from an accidental explosion during the surrender ceremonies. After the war, Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens maintained that Lincoln's attempt to resupply Sumter was a disguised reinforcement and had provoked the war.
Following the Battle of Fort Sumter
Battle of Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina, that started the American Civil War. Following declarations of secession by seven Southern states, South Carolina demanded that the U.S. Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor. On...
, Lincoln called for the states to send troops to recapture Sumter and all other federal property that had been seized in the seven seceding states Lincoln issued this call before Congress could convene on the matter, and the original request from the War Department called for volunteers for only three months of duty. Lincoln's call for troops resulted in four border states deciding to secede rather than provide troops that would be marching into neighboring Southern states. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina joined the Confederacy, bringing the total to 11 states. Once Virginia had joined, the Confederate States moved their capital from Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is located on the Alabama River southeast of the center of the state, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2010 census, Montgomery had a population of 205,764 making it the second-largest city...
, to Richmond, Virginia
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
. All but two major battles (Antietam
Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam , fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek, as part of the Maryland Campaign, was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Northern soil. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000...
and Gettysburg
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg , was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The battle with the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War, it is often described as the war's turning point. Union Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade's Army of the Potomac...
) took place in Confederate territory.
Incursions: 1862
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By 1862, the Union had taken control of New Orleans, and had gained control of the contested northernmost slave states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia). Two major Confederate incursions into Union territory in 1862, Lee's invasion of Maryland
Maryland Campaign
The Maryland Campaign, or the Antietam Campaign is widely considered one of the major turning points of the American Civil War. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's first invasion of the North was repulsed by Maj. Gen. George B...
and Braxton Bragg
Braxton Bragg
Braxton Bragg was a career United States Army officer, and then a general in the Confederate States Army—a principal commander in the Western Theater of the American Civil War and later the military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.Bragg, a native of North Carolina, was...
's invasion of Kentucky were decisively repulsed, and both armies barely escaped capture.
Nevins (1960) argues that 1862 was the high water mark of the Confederacy, and that the failures of the two invasions were the same: lack of manpower, lack of supplies—there were hardly any new shoes or boots—and exhaustion after long marches. Weak national leadership meant that Davis's favorites like Bragg remained in command of an army he could not handle, and the disorganized overall direction stood in sharp contrast to the much improved organization in Washington.
With another 10,000 men Lee and Bragg might have prevailed, but their goal of gaining new soldiers failed because the border states did not respond to their pleas.
Anaconda: 1863–1864
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By 1863 the Union held control of most of Tennessee; with the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 4 of that year, the Union gained complete control over the Mississippi River, cutting off the westernmost portions of the Confederacy (Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and the Oklahoma and Arizona Territories).
In 1864, the Union took Mobile, Alabama
Battle of Mobile Bay
The Battle of Mobile Bay of August 5, 1864, was an engagement of the American Civil War in which a Federal fleet commanded by Rear Adm. David G. Farragut, assisted by a contingent of soldiers, attacked a smaller Confederate fleet led by Adm...
, the last major port on the Gulf Coast, and by September 1864 Atlanta
Atlanta Campaign
The Atlanta Campaign was a series of battles fought in the Western Theater of the American Civil War throughout northwest Georgia and the area around Atlanta during the summer of 1864. Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman invaded Georgia from the vicinity of Chattanooga, Tennessee, beginning in May...
fell to Union troops, paving the way for the March to the Sea
Sherman's March to the Sea
Sherman's March to the Sea is the name commonly given to the Savannah Campaign conducted around Georgia from November 15, 1864 to December 21, 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army in the American Civil War...
by William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator and author. He served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War , for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the "scorched...
's forces; he reached Savannah by the end of the year, then moved north into the Carolinas, devastating a wide swath of the Confederate heartland. The major defeat at the Battle of Nashville
Battle of Nashville
The Battle of Nashville was a two-day battle in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign that represented the end of large-scale fighting in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. It was fought at Nashville, Tennessee, on December 15–16, 1864, between the Confederate Army of Tennessee under...
in December destroyed the main Confederate forces in the west.
Collapse: 1865
Senior Confederate officials met with Lincoln and his aidesHampton Roads Conference
The Hampton Roads Conference was an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate an end to the American Civil War. On February 3, 1865, near Fort Monroe in Newport News, Virginia, aboard a ship, the River Queen, President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward, representing the United...
in February, but rejected Lincoln's invitation to return to the Union (which came with a suggestion the Union would buy the slaves). It was independence or nothing, but Lee's army was wracked by desertions and could barely hold on in the trenches around Richmond.
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When the Union broke through Lee's lines at Petersburg, the main strong point that controlled the capital, Richmond fell immediately. Lee raced west to escape, but was caught and surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia
Army of Northern Virginia
The Army of Northern Virginia was the primary military force of the Confederate States of America in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War, as well as the primary command structure of the Department of Northern Virginia. It was most often arrayed against the Union Army of the Potomac...
at Appomattox, Virginia
Appomattox Court House National Historical Park
The Appomattox Court House National Historical Park is a National Historical Park of original and reconstructed nineteenth century buildings. It was signed into law August 3, 1935. The village was made a national monument in 1940 and a national historical park in 1954...
on April 9, 1865, marking the end of the Confederacy.
Some high officials escaped to Europe but Union patrols captured President Davis on May 10; all remaining Confederate forces surrendered by June 1865. The U.S. Army took control of the Confederate areas and there was no post-surrender insurgency or guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
against the army, but there was a great deal of local violence, feuding and revenge killings.
Historian Gary Gallagher concludes: "The Confederacy capitulated in the spring of 1865 because northern armies had demonstrated their ability to crush organized southern military resistance....Civilians who had maintained faith in their defenders despite material hardship and social disruption similarly recognized that the end had come.... Most Confederates knew that as a people they had expended blood and treasure in profusion before ultimately collapsing in the face of northern power sternly applied."
"Died of states' rights"
Historian Frank Lawrence OwsleyFrank Lawrence Owsley
Frank Lawrence Owsley was an American historian who taught at Vanderbilt University for most of his career, where he specialized in southern history and was a member of the Southern Agrarians.-Life and career:...
argued that the Confederacy "died of states' rights." According to Owsley, strong-willed governors and state legislatures in the South refused to give the central government the soldiers and money it needed because they feared that Richmond would encroach on the rights of the states. Georgia's governor Joseph Brown
Joseph E. Brown
Joseph Emerson Brown , often referred to as Joe Brown, was the 42nd Governor of Georgia from 1857 to 1865, and a U.S. Senator from 1880 to 1891...
warned that he saw the signs of a deep-laid conspiracy on the part of Jefferson Davis to destroy states' rights and individual liberty. Brown declaimed: "Almost every act of usurpation of power, or of bad faith, has been conceived, brought forth and nurtured in secret session." He saw granting the Confederate government the power to draft soldiers as the "essence of military despotism."
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In 1863 governor Pendleton Murrah
Pendleton Murrah
Pendleton Murrah was the tenth Governor of Texas. His term in office coincided with the American Civil War.A native of South Carolina, Murrah graduated from Brown University in 1848. He moved to Texas and opened a law practice in Marshall. He ran and was defeated for the U.S...
of Texas insisted that his State needed Texas troops for self-defense (against Native Americans or against a threatened Union advance), and refused to send them East. Zebulon Vance, the governor of North Carolina, had a reputation for hostility to Davis and to his demands. North Carolina showed intense opposition to conscription, resulting in very poor results for recruiting. Governor Vance's faith in states' rights drove him into a stubborn opposition.
Historian George Rable wrote:
Echoing Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry was an orator and politician who led the movement for independence in Virginia in the 1770s. A Founding Father, he served as the first and sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia from 1776 to 1779 and subsequently, from 1784 to 1786...
's "give me liberty or give me death" Stephens warned the Southerners they should never view liberty as "subordinate to independence" because the cry of "independence first and liberty second" was a "fatal delusion". As Rable concludes, "For Stephens, the essence of patriotism, the heart of the Confederate cause, rested on an unyielding commitment to traditional rights. In his idealist vision of politics, military necessity, pragmatism, and compromise meant nothing".
Despite political differences within the Confederacy, no political parties were formed. Historian William C. Cooper Jr. wrote that "at the birth of their new nation, Confederates, in the language of the Founding Fathers, denounced the legitimacy of parties. Anti-partyism became an article of political faith. Almost nobody, even Davis’s most fervent antagonists, advocated parties." This lack of a functioning two party system, according to historian David M. Potter, caused "real and direct damage" to the Confederate war effort since it prevented the formulation of any effective alternatives to the Davis administration's policies in conducting the war.
The survival of the Confederacy depended on a strong base of civilians and soldiers devoted to victory. The soldiers performed well, though increasing numbers deserted in the last year of fighting, and the Confederacy never succeeded in replacing casualties as the Union could. The civilians, although enthusiastic in 1861–62, seem to have lost faith in the future of the Confederacy by 1864, and instead looked to protect their homes and communities. As Rable explains, "As the Confederacy shrank, citizens' sense of the cause more than ever narrowed to their own states and communities. This contraction of civic vision was more than a crabbed libertarianism; it represented an increasingly widespread disillusionment with the Confederate experiment."
Constitution
The Southern leaders met in Montgomery, Alabama, to write their constitution. Much of the Confederate States ConstitutionConfederate States Constitution
The Constitution of the Confederate States of America was the supreme law of the Confederate States of America, as adopted on March 11, 1861 and in effect through the conclusion of the American Civil War. The Confederacy also operated under a Provisional Constitution from February 8, 1861 to March...
replicated the United States Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
verbatim, but it contained several explicit protections of the institution of slavery including provisions for the recognition and protection of negro slavery in any new state admitted to the Confederacy. It maintained the existing ban on international slave-trading while protecting the existing internal trade of slaves among slaveholding states.
Commerce Clause
The Commerce Clause is an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution . The clause states that the United States Congress shall have power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." Courts and commentators have tended to...
, the Confederate version prohibited the central government from using revenues collected in one state for funding internal improvements in another state. The Confederate Constitution's equivalent to the U.S. Constitution's general welfare clause
General Welfare clause
A General Welfare clause is a section that appeared in many constitutions, as well as in some charters and statutes, which provides that the governing body empowered by the document may enact laws to promote the general welfare of the people...
prohibited protective tariffs (but allowed tariffs for providing domestic revenue), and spoke of "carry[ing] on the Government of the Confederate States" rather than providing for the "general welfare". State legislatures had the power to impeach
Impeachment
Impeachment is a formal process in which an official is accused of unlawful activity, the outcome of which, depending on the country, may include the removal of that official from office as well as other punishment....
officials of the Confederate government in some cases. On the other hand, the Confederate Constitution contained a Necessary and Proper Clause and a Supremacy Clause
Supremacy Clause
Article VI, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, known as the Supremacy Clause, establishes the U.S. Constitution, U.S. Treaties, and Federal Statutes as "the supreme law of the land." The text decrees these to be the highest form of law in the U.S...
that essentially duplicated the respective clauses of the U.S. Constitution. The Confederate Constitution also incorporated each of the 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution that had been ratified up to that point.
The Confederate Constitution did not specifically include a provision allowing states to secede; the Preamble spoke of each state "acting in its sovereign and independent character" but also of the formation of a "permanent federal government". During the debates on drafting the Confederate Constitution, one proposal would have allowed states to secede from the Confederacy. The proposal was tabled with only the South Carolina delegates voting in favor of considering the motion. The Confederate Constitution also explicitly denied States the power to bar slaveholders from other parts of the Confederacy from bringing their slaves into any state of the Confederacy or to interfere with the property rights of slave owners traveling between different parts of the Confederacy. In contrast with the language of the United States Constitution, the Confederate Constitution overtly asked God's blessing ("...invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God...").
Executive
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders collapsible collapsed" style="float: right; margin-right: 0; margin-left: 1em;"|+ Confederate Executive, 1861–1865
Table of departments, officers and terms
|-
! scope="col" | Office
! scope="col" | Name
! scope="col" | Term
|-
! scope="row" | President
President of the Confederate States of America
The President of the Confederate States of America was the Head of State and Head of Government of the Confederate States of America, which was formed from the states which declared their secession from the United States, thus precipitating the American Civil War. The only person to hold the...
| Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Finis Davis , also known as Jeff Davis, was an American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President for its entire history. He was born in Kentucky to Samuel and Jane Davis...
| 1861–1865
|-
! scope="row" | Vice President
Vice President of the Confederate States of America
The Vice President of the Confederate States of America was an office held by Alexander Stephens of Georgia, who served under President Jefferson Davis of Mississippi from February 18, 1861 to May 11, 1865. Having first been elected by the Confederate Congress, both were considered provisional...
| Alexander Stephens
Alexander Stephens
Alexander Hamilton Stephens was an American politician from Georgia. He was Vice President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. He also served as a U.S...
| 1861–1865
|-
! scope="row" | Secretary of State
Confederate States Secretary of State
The Confederate States Secretary of State was the head of the Confederate States State Department from 1861 to 1865 during the American Civil War. There were three people who served the position in this time. The department crumbled with the Confederate States of America in May 1865, marking the...
| Robert Toombs
Robert Toombs
Robert Augustus Toombs was an American political leader, United States Senator from Georgia, 1st Secretary of State of the Confederacy, and a Confederate general in the Civil War.-Early life:...
| 1861
|-
! scope="row" |
| Robert M.T. Hunter
Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter
-References:* Patrick, Rembert W. . Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. pp. 90–101.-External links:* – A speech by R. M. T. Hunter before the U.S. House of Representatives, May 8th, 1846...
| 1861–1862
|-
! scope="row" |
| Judah P. Benjamin
Judah P. Benjamin
Judah Philip Benjamin was an American politician and lawyer. Born a British subject in the West Indies, he moved to the United States with his parents and became a citizen. He later became a citizen of the Confederate States of America. After the collapse of the Confederacy, Benjamin moved to...
| 1862–1865
|-
! scope="row" | Secretary of the Treasury
| Christopher Memminger
Christopher Memminger
Christopher Gustavus Memminger was a prominent political leader and the first Secretary of the Treasury for the Confederate States of America.-Early life and career:...
| 1861–1864
|-
! scope="row" |
| George Trenholm
George Trenholm
George Alfred Trenholm was a prominent politician in the Confederate States of America and served as the Secretary of the Treasury during its final year.-Biography:...
| 1864–1865
|-
! scope="row" |
| John H. Reagan
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | Secretary of War
Confederate States Secretary of War
The Confederate States Secretary of War was a member of the Confederate States President's Cabinet during the Civil War. The Secretary of War led the Confederate States Department of War. The position ended in May 1865 when the Confederacy crumbled during John C. Breckinridge's tenure of the...
| Leroy Pope Walker
LeRoy Pope Walker
LeRoy Pope Walker was the first Confederate States Secretary of War.-Early life and career:Walker was born near Huntsville, Alabama in 1817, the son of John Williams Walker and Matilda Pope, and a grandson of LeRoy Pope. He was educated by private tutors, then attended universities in Alabama and...
| 1861
|-
! scope="row" |
| Judah P. Benjamin
Judah P. Benjamin
Judah Philip Benjamin was an American politician and lawyer. Born a British subject in the West Indies, he moved to the United States with his parents and became a citizen. He later became a citizen of the Confederate States of America. After the collapse of the Confederacy, Benjamin moved to...
| 1861–1862
|-
! scope="row" |
| George W. Randolph
George W. Randolph
George Wythe Randolph was a lawyer, planter, and Confederate general. He served for eight months in 1862 as the Confederate States Secretary of War during the American Civil War, when he reformed procurement, wrote the conscription law, and strengthened western defenses...
| 1862
|-
! scope="row" |
| James Seddon
James Seddon
James Alexander Seddon was an American lawyer and politician who served two terms in the U.S. Congress as a member of the Democratic Party. He was appointed Confederate States Secretary of War by Jefferson Davis during the American Civil War.-Biography:Seddon was born in Falmouth, Stafford County,...
| 1862–1865
|-
! scope="row" |
| John C. Breckinridge
John C. Breckinridge
John Cabell Breckinridge was an American lawyer and politician. He served as a U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator from Kentucky and was the 14th Vice President of the United States , to date the youngest vice president in U.S...
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | Secretary of the Navy
| Stephen Mallory
Stephen Mallory
Stephen Russell Mallory served in the United States Senate as, Senator from Florida from 1850 to the secession of his home state and the outbreak of the American Civil War. For much of that period, he was chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs...
| 1861–1865
|-
! scope="row" | Postmaster General
Postage stamps and postal history of the Confederate States
The postage stamps and postal system of the Confederate States of America carried the mail of the Confederacy for a brief period in American history. Early in 1861 when South Carolina territory no longer considered itself part of the Union and demanded that the U.S. Army abandon Fort Sumter, plans...
| John H. Reagan
| 1861–1865
|-
! scope="row" | Attorney General
Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general, or attorney-general, is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.The term is used to refer to any person...
| Judah P. Benjamin
Judah P. Benjamin
Judah Philip Benjamin was an American politician and lawyer. Born a British subject in the West Indies, he moved to the United States with his parents and became a citizen. He later became a citizen of the Confederate States of America. After the collapse of the Confederacy, Benjamin moved to...
| 1861
|-
! scope="row" |
| Thomas Bragg
Thomas Bragg
Thomas Bragg was a politician and lawyer who served as the 34th Governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina from 1855 through 1859. During the Civil War, he served in the Confederate States Cabinet. He was the older brother of General Braxton Bragg...
| 1861–1862
|-
! scope="row" |
| Thomas H. Watts
Thomas H. Watts
Thomas Hill Watts was the 18th Governor of the U.S. state of Alabama from 1863 to 1865, during the Civil War....
| 1862–1863
|-
! scope="row" |
| George Davis
George Davis (politician)
George Davis was a Confederate States of America political figure and the last Confederate Attorney General, serving from 1864 to 1865.He was not related to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.-Early life and career:...
| 1864–1865
|}
The Confederate Congress could overturn either the general or the line item vetoes with the same two-thirds majorities that are required in the U.S. Congress. In addition, appropriations not specifically requested by the executive branch required passage by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress. The only person to serve as president was Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Finis Davis , also known as Jeff Davis, was an American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President for its entire history. He was born in Kentucky to Samuel and Jane Davis...
, due to the Confederacy being defeated before the completion of his term.
Legislative
As its legislative branch, the Confederate States of America instituted the Confederate Congress. Like the United States Congress, the Confederate Congress consisted of two houses:- the Confederate Senate, whose membership included two senators from each state (and chosen by the state legislature)
- the Confederate House of Representatives, with members popularly elected by properly enfranchised residents of the individual states
Provisional Congress
For the first year, the unicameral Provisional Confederate Congress
Provisional Confederate Congress
The Provisional Confederate Congress, for a time the legislative branch of the Confederate States of America, was the body which drafted the Confederate Constitution, elected Jefferson Davis President of the Confederacy, and designed the first Confederate flag...
functioned as the Confederacy's legislative branch.
President of the Provisional Congress
- Howell Cobb, Sr.Howell CobbHowell Cobb was an American political figure. A Southern Democrat, Cobb was a five-term member of the United States House of Representatives and Speaker of the House from 1849 to 1851...
of Georgia, February 4, 1861 – February 17, 1862
Presidents pro tempore of the Provisional Congress
- Robert Woodward BarnwellRobert Woodward BarnwellRobert Woodward Barnwell was an American planter, lawyer, and educator from South Carolina who served as a Senator in both the United States Senate and that of the Confederate States of America.-Biography:...
of South CarolinaSouth CarolinaSouth Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
, February 4, 1861 - Thomas Stanhope BocockThomas Stanhope BocockThomas Stanley Bocock was a nineteenth century politician and lawyer from Virginia. After serving as an antebellum United States Congressman, he was the Speaker of the Confederate States House of Representatives during most of the American Civil War-Biography:Born at Buckingham Court House in...
of VirginiaVirginiaThe Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, December 10–21, 1861 and January 7–8, 1862 - Josiah Abigail Patterson CampbellJosiah Abigail Patterson CampbellJosiah Abigail Patterson Campbell was a prominent Confederate States of America politician.He was born in Camden, South Carolina. He later moved to Mississippi and served in the state legislature in 1851 and 1859. He was elected to the Provisional Confederate Congress and served as its President...
of MississippiMississippiMississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
, December 23–24, 1861 and January 6, 1862
Sessions of the Confederate Congress
- Provisional Confederate CongressProvisional Confederate CongressThe Provisional Confederate Congress, for a time the legislative branch of the Confederate States of America, was the body which drafted the Confederate Constitution, elected Jefferson Davis President of the Confederacy, and designed the first Confederate flag...
- First Confederate CongressFirst Confederate CongressThe First Confederate Congress was the first regular term of the legislature of the Confederate States of America. Members of the First Confederate Congress were chosen in elections mostly held on 6 November 1861.-Sessions:...
- Second Confederate CongressSecond Confederate CongressThe Second Confederate Congress was the second and last regular term of the legislature of the Confederate States of America. Members of the Second Confederate Congress were chosen in elections held at various dates in 1863 and 1864...
Tribal Representatives to Confederate Congress
- Elias Cornelius BoudinotElias Cornelius BoudinotElias Cornelius Boudinot was a delegate to the Arkansas secession convention, a colonel in the Confederate States Army, and a territorial representative in the Confederate Congress.-Life:...
1862–65, CherokeeCherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family... - Samuel Benton CallahanSamuel Benton CallahanSamuel Benton Callahan was a Confederate politician during the American Civil War.Samuel Callahan was born in Mobile, Alabama, as a member of the Creek tribe. He represented the Creek and Seminole nations in the Second Confederate Congress.-Notes:http://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/5303...
Unknown years, Creek, SeminoleSeminoleThe Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida, who now reside primarily in that state and Oklahoma. The Seminole nation emerged in a process of ethnogenesis out of groups of Native Americans, most significantly Creeks from what is now Georgia and Alabama, who settled in Florida in... - Burton Allen HolderBurton Allen HolderBurton Allen Holder , a member of the Chickasaw tribe of Native Americans, gained fame as a soldier in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War...
1864–1865, ChickasawChickasawThe Chickasaw are Native American people originally from the region that would become the Southeastern United States... - Robert McDonald JonesRobert McDonald JonesRobert McDonald Jones was a prominent Confederate politician. He was born in Mississippi and later relocated to Indian Territory. During the removal of Chocktaws to Indian Territory he worked for federal funds for the tribe. He represented the Choctaw nation in the First Confederate Congress from...
1863–65, ChoctawChoctawThe Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
Judicial
The Confederate Constitution outlined a judicial branch of the government, but the ongoing war and resistance from states-rights advocates, particularly on the question of whether it would have appellate jurisdiction over the state courts, prevented the creation or seating of the "Supreme Court of the Confederate States"; the state courts generally continued to operate as they had done, simply recognizing the C.S.A. as the national government.{| align=right
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Confederate district courts were authorized by Article III, Section 1, of the Confederate Constitution, and President Davis appointed judges within the individual states of the Confederate States of America. In many cases, the same U.S. Federal District Judges were appointed as Confederate States District Judges. Confederate district courts began reopening in the spring of 1861 handling many of the same type cases as had been done before. Prize cases, in which Union ships were captured by the Confederate Navy or raiders and sold through court proceedings, were heard until the blockade of southern ports made this impossible. After a Sequestration Act was passed by the Confederate Congress, the Confederate district courts heard many cases in which enemy aliens (typically Northern absentee landlords owning property in the South) had their property sequestered (i.e., seized) by Confederate Receivers. When the matter came before the Confederate court, the property owner could not appear because he was unable to travel across the front line
Front line
A front line is the farthest-most forward position of an armed force's personnel and equipment - generally in respect of maritime or land forces. Forward Line of Own Troops , or Forward Edge of Battle Area are technical terms used by all branches of the armed services...
s between Union and Confederate forces. Thus, the C.S. District Attorney won the case by default, the property was typically sold, and the money used to further the Southern war effort. Eventually, because there was no Confederate Supreme Court, sharp attorneys like South Carolina's Edward McCrady began filing appeals. This prevented their clients' property from being sold until a supreme court could be constituted to hear the appeal, which never occurred. Where Federal troops gained control over parts of the Confederacy and re-established civilian government, U.S. district courts sometimes resumed jurisdiction.
Supreme Court – not established.
District Courts – judges
- Alabama William G. Jones 1861–1865
- Arkansas Daniel RingoDaniel RingoDaniel Ringo was a United States federal judge in Arkansas who sided with the Confederacy during the American Civil War.-Biography:Born in Cross Plains, Kentucky, Ringo read law to enter the Bar in 1830...
1861–1865 - Florida Jesse J. FinleyJesse J. FinleyJesse Johnson Finley was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Florida and the mayor of Memphis, Tennessee. He was also a brigadier general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War....
1861–1862 - Georgia Henry R. JacksonHenry R. JacksonHenry Rootes Jackson was a major general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.-Biography:...
1861, Edward J. Harden 1861–1865 - Louisiana Edwin Warren Moise 1861–1865
- Mississippi Alexander Mosby ClaytonAlexander Mosby ClaytonAlexander Mosby Clayton was a prominent Confederate politician. He was born in Campbell County, Virginia and later moved to Arkansas where he served on the Territorial Supreme Court in 1832. He then moved to Mississippi where he served as a state court judge from 1842 to 1852. In 1853 he served as...
1861–1865 - North Carolina Asa BiggsAsa BiggsAsa Biggs was a North Carolina politician who held a number of positions. He was a U.S. Representative, a U.S. Senator, and federal judge....
1861–1865
- South Carolina Andrew G. Magrath 1861–1864, Benjamin F. Perry 1865
- Tennessee West H. Humphreys 1861–1865
- Texas-East William Pinckney Hill 1861–1865
- Texas-West Thomas J. Devine 1861–1865
- Virginia-East James D. Halyburton 1861–1865
- Virginia-West John W. Brockenbrough 1861–1865
Post Office
When the Confederacy was formed and its seceding states broke from the Union, it was at once confronted with the arduous task of providing its citizens with a mail delivery system, and in the midst of the American Civil War the newly formed Confederacy created and established the Confederate Post Office. One of the first undertakings in establishing the Post Office was the appointment of John H. Reagan to the position of Postmaster General, by Jefferson DavisJefferson Davis
Jefferson Finis Davis , also known as Jeff Davis, was an American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President for its entire history. He was born in Kentucky to Samuel and Jane Davis...
in 1861, making him the first Postmaster General of the Confederate Post Office as well as a member of Davis' presidential cabinet. Through Reagan's resourcefulness and remarkable industry, he had his department assembled, organized and in operation before the other Presidential cabinet members had their departments fully operational. |accessdate=2010-11-17}} Biographical Directory of the United States|accessdate=2011-02-19}}
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
began, the U.S. Post Office still delivered mail from the seceded states for a brief period of time. Mail that was postmarked after the date of a state’s admission into the Confederacy through May 31, 1861 and bearing US (Union) Postage was still delivered. After this time, private express companies still managed to carry some of the mail across enemy lines. Later mail that crossed lines had to be sent by 'Flag of Truce' and was only allowed to pass at two specific points: Mail sent from the South to Northern states was received, opened and inspected at Fortress Monroe on the Virginia coast before being passed on into the U.S. mail stream. Mail sent from the North to any of the seceded states passed at City Point
City Point, Virginia
City Point was a town in Prince George County, Virginia that was annexed by the independent city of Hopewell in 1923. It served as headquarters of the Union Army during the Siege of Petersburg during the American Civil War.- History :...
, also in Virginia, where it was also inspected before being sent on.
With the chaos of the war, a working postal system was more important than ever for the Confederacy. The Civil War had divided family members and friends and consequently letter writing naturally increased dramatically across the entire divided nation, especially to and from the men who were away serving in an army. Mail delivery was also important for the Confederacy for a myriad of business and military reasons. Because of the Union blockade, basic supplies were always in demand and so getting mailed correspondence out of the country to suppliers was imperative to the successful operation of the Confederacy. Volumes of material have been written about the Blockade runners who evaded Union ships on blockade patrol, usually at night, and who moved cargo and mail in and out of the Confederate States throughout the course of the war. Of particular interest to students and historians of the American Civil War is Prisoner of War mail and Blockade mail as these items were often involved with a variety of military and other war time activities. The postal history of the Confederacy along with surviving Confederate mail has helped historians document the various people, places and events that were involved in the American Civil War as it unfolded.
Civil liberties
The Confederacy actively used the army to arrest people suspected of loyalty to the United States. Historian Mark Neely found 4,108 names of men arrested and estimated a much larger total. The Confederacy arrested pro-Union civilians in the South at about the same rate as the Union arrested pro-Confederate civilians in the North. Neely concludes:National production
The Confederacy started its existence as an agrarian economy with exports, to a world market, of cottonCotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
, and, to a lesser extent, tobacco
Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
and sugarcane
Sugarcane
Sugarcane refers to any of six to 37 species of tall perennial grasses of the genus Saccharum . Native to the warm temperate to tropical regions of South Asia, they have stout, jointed, fibrous stalks that are rich in sugar, and measure two to six metres tall...
. Local food production included grains, hogs, cattle, and gardens.
The 11 states produced $155 million in manufactured goods in 1860, chiefly from local grist-mills, and lumber, processed tobacco, cotton goods and naval stores
Naval stores
Naval Stores is a broad term which originally applied to the resin-based components used in building and maintaining wooden sailing ships, a category which includes cordage, mask, turpentine, rosin, pitch and tar...
such as turpentine
Turpentine
Turpentine is a fluid obtained by the distillation of resin obtained from trees, mainly pine trees. It is composed of terpenes, mainly the monoterpenes alpha-pinene and beta-pinene...
. By the 1830s, the 11 states produced more cotton than all of the other countries in the world combined.
The Confederacy adopted a low tariff
Tariff
A tariff may be either tax on imports or exports , or a list or schedule of prices for such things as rail service, bus routes, and electrical usage ....
of 15 per cent, but imposed it on all imports from other countries, including the Union states. The tariff mattered little; the Union blockade minimized commercial traffic through the Confederacy's ports, and very few people paid taxes on goods smuggled from the Union states. The government collected about $3.5 million in tariff revenue from the start of their war against the Union to late 1864. The lack of adequate financial resources led the Confederacy to finance the war through printing money, which led to high inflation.
The requirements of its military encouraged the Confederate government to take a dirigiste
Dirigisme
Dirigisme is an economy in which the government exerts strong directive influence. While the term has occasionally been applied to centrally planned economies, where the state effectively controls both production and allocation of resources , it originally had neither of these meanings when...
-style approach to industrialization.
But such efforts faced setbacks: Union raids and in particular Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator and author. He served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War , for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the "scorched...
's scorched-earth campaigning destroyed much economic infrastructure.
Transportation systems
In peacetime, the vast system of navigable rivers allowed for cheap and easy transportation of farm products. The railroad system, built as a supplement, tied plantation areas to the nearest river or seaport. The vast geography of the Confederacy made logistics difficult for the Union, and the Union armies assigned many of their soldiers to garrison captured areas and to protect rail lines. Nevertheless, the Union NavyUnion Navy
The Union Navy is the label applied to the United States Navy during the American Civil War, to contrast it from its direct opponent, the Confederate States Navy...
had seized most of the navigable rivers by 1862, making its own logistics easy and Confederate movements difficult. After the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, it became impossible for Confederate units to cross the Mississippi: Union gunboats constantly patrolled the river. The South thus lost the use of its western regions.
At the end of 1860, the Southern rail network was disjointed and plagued by break of gauge as well as lack of interchange. In addition, most rail lines lead from coastal or river ports to inland cities, with few lateral railroads. This made travel between adjacent states by rail difficult.
The outbreak of war had a depressing effect on the economic fortunes of the railroad system in Confederate territory. The hoarding of the cotton crop in an attempt to entice European intervention left railroads bereft of their main source of income. Many had to lay off employees, and in particular, let go skilled technicians and engineers. For the early years of the war, the Confederate government had a hands-off approach to the railroads. Only in mid-1863 did the Confederate government initiate an overall policy, and it was confined solely to aiding the war effort. With the legislation of impressment
Impressment
Impressment, colloquially, "the Press", was the act of taking men into a navy by force and without notice. It was used by the Royal Navy, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries, in wartime, as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice goes back to...
the same year, railroads and their rolling stock came under the de facto control of the military.
In the last year before the end of the war, the Confederate railroad system stood permanently on the verge of collapse. There was no new equipment and raids on both sides systematically destroyed key bridges, as well as locomotives and freight cars. Spare parts were cannibalized; feeder lines were torn up to get replacement rails for trunk lines, and the heavy use of rolling stock wore them out.
Financial instruments
Both the individual Confederate states and later the Confederate government printed Confederate States of America dollarConfederate States of America dollar
The Confederate States of America dollar was first issued into circulation in April 1861, when the Confederacy was only two months old, and on the eve of the outbreak of the Civil War....
s as paper currency in various denominations, much of it signed by the Treasurer Edward C. Elmore
Edward C. Elmore
Edward Carrington Elmore served as the Treasurer of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. His signature appears on collectible Confederate currency, and he designed several of the Confederacy's coins....
. During the course of the war these severely depreciated and eventually became worthless. Many bills still exist, although in recent years copies have proliferated.
The Confederate government initially financed the war effort mostly through tariffs on imports, export taxes, and voluntary donations of coins and bullion. However, after the imposition of a self-embargo
Embargo
An embargo is the partial or complete prohibition of commerce and trade with a particular country, in order to isolate it. Embargoes are considered strong diplomatic measures imposed in an effort, by the imposing country, to elicit a given national-interest result from the country on which it is...
on cotton sales to Europe in 1861, these sources of revenue dried up and the Confederacy increasingly turned to issuing debt
Government debt
Government debt is money owed by a central government. In the US, "government debt" may also refer to the debt of a municipal or local government...
and printing money to pay for war expanses. The Confederate States politicians were worried about angering the general population with hard taxes. A tax increase might disillusion many Southerners, so the Confederacy resorted to printing more money. As a result inflation increased and remained a problem for the southern states throughout the rest of the war.
The Treasury also issued paper bonds in large numbers, and the Post Office produced a considerable number of postage stamps; both stamps and bonds (and especially bond coupons) remain readily available. The philatelic market regards as far more valuable the stamps placed on envelopes that were actually used during the war.
At the time of their secession, the states (and later the Confederate government) took over the national mints in their territories: the Charlotte Mint
Charlotte Mint
The Charlotte Mint was a branch of the United States Mint that came into existence on March 3, 1835 during the Carolina Gold Rush. The first gold mine in the United States was established in North Carolina at the Reed Gold Mine...
in North Carolina, the Dahlonega Mint
Dahlonega Mint
The Dahlonega Mint was a branch of the United States Mint. It was located at 34°31.8′N 83°59.2′W at Dahlonega, Lumpkin County, Georgia. Coins produced at the Dahlonega Mint bear the "D" mint mark. That mint mark is used today by the Denver Mint, which opened many years after the Dahlonega Mint...
in Georgia, and the New Orleans Mint
New Orleans Mint
The New Orleans Mint operated in New Orleans, Louisiana, as a branch mint of the United States Mint from 1838 to 1861 and from 1879 to 1909. During its years of operation, it produced over 427 million gold and silver coins of nearly every American denomination, with a total face value of over...
in Louisiana. During 1861, the first two produced small amounts of gold coinage, the latter half dollars. Since the mints used the current dies on hand, these issues remain indistinguishable from those minted by the Union.
However the four half dollars with a Confederate (rather than U.S.) reverse, mentioned below, used an obverse die that had a small crack. Thus "regular" 1861-O halves with this crack probably were among the 962,633 pieces struck under Confederate authority.
In 1861 plans also originated to produce Confederate coins. The New Orleans Mint produced dies and four specimen half dollars, but a lack of bullion prevented any further minting. A jeweler in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, manufactured a dozen pennies under an agreement, but did not deliver them for fear of arrest. Over the years copies of both denominations have appeared. More details and pictures of the original issues appear in A Guide Book of United States Coins
A Guide Book of United States Coins
A Guide Book of United States Coins , by Richard Yeoman, ISBN 0-7948-2039-5, is a pricing guide for United States coin collectors, and is considered one of the most authoritative coin price sources. The book is the longest running coin price guide; the first edition, dated 1947, went on sale...
.
Devastation by 1865
By the end of the war deterioration of the Southern infrastructure was widespread. The number of civilian deaths is unknown. Most of the war was fought in Virginia and Tennessee, but every Southern state was affected as well as Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky Missouri, and Indian Territory. Texas and Florida saw the least military action. Much of the damage was caused by military action, but most was caused by lack of repairs and upkeep, and by deliberately using up resources. Historians have recently estimated how much of the devastation was caused by military action. Of 645 counties in 9 Confederate states (excluding Texas and Florida), there was Union military action in 56% of them, containing 63% of the 1860 white population and 64% of the slaves in 1860; however by the time the action took place some people had fled to safer areas, so the exact population exposed to war is unknown.{| align=right
|
|}
The 11 Confederate states in the 1860 census had 297 towns and cities with 835,000 people; of these 162 with 681,000 people were at one point occupied by Union forces. Eleven were destroyed or severely damaged by war action, including Atlanta (with an 1860 population of 9,600), Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond (with prewar populations of 40,500, 8,100, and 37,900, respectively); the eleven contained 115,900 people in the 1860 census, or 14% of the urban South. Historians have not estimated what their actual population was when Union forces arrived. The number of people (as of 1860) who lived in the destroyed towns represented just over 1% of the Confederacy's 1860 population. In addition, 45 court houses were burned (out of 830). The South's agriculture was not highly mechanized. The value of farm implements and machinery in the 1860 Census was $81 million; by 1870, there was 40% less, worth just $48 million. Many old tools had broken through heavy use; new tools were rarely available; even repairs were difficult.
The economic losses affected everyone. Banks and insurance companies were mostly bankrupt. Confederate currency and bonds were worthless. The billions of dollars invested in slaves vanished. However, most debts were left behind. Most farms were intact but most had lost their horses, mules and cattle; fences and barns were in disrepair. Prices for cotton had plunged. The rebuilding would take years and require outside investment because the devastation was so thorough. One historian has summarized the collapse of the transportation infrastructure needed for economic recovery:
- "One of the greatest calamities which confronted Southerners was the havoc wrought on the transportation system. Roads were impassable or nonexistent, and bridges were destroyed or washed away. The important river traffic was at a standstill: levees were broken, channels were blocked, the few steamboats which had not been captured or destroyed were in a state of disrepair, wharves had decayed or were missing, and trained personnel were dead or dispersed. Horses, mules, oxen, carriages, wagons, and carts had nearly all fallen prey at one time or another to the contending armies. The railroads were paralyzed, with most of the companies bankrupt. These lines had been the special target of the enemy. On one stretch of 114 miles in Alabama, every bridge and trestle was destroyed, cross-ties rotten, buildings burned, water-tanks gone, ditches filled up, and tracks grown up in weeds and bushes. . . . Communication centers like Columbia and Atlanta were in ruins; shops and foundries were wrecked or in disrepair. Even those areas bypassed by battle had been pirated for equipment needed on the battlefront, and the wear and tear of wartime usage without adequate repairs or replacements reduced all to a state of disintegration."
National flags
The first official flag of the Confederate States of America—called the "Stars and Bars" – originally had seven stars, representing the first seven states that initially formed the Confederacy. As more states seceded, more stars were added, until the total was 13 (two stars were added for the divided states of Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
and Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
). However, during the Battle of Bull Run (or First Manassas) it sometimes proved difficult to distinguish the Stars and Bars from the Union flag. To rectify the situation, a separate "Battle Flag" was designed for use by troops in the field. Also known as the "Southern Cross", many variations sprang from the original square configuration. Although it was never officially adopted by the Confederate government, the popularity of the Southern Cross among both soldiers and the civilian population was a primary reason why it was made the main color feature when a new national flag was adopted in 1863. This new standard—known as the "Stainless Banner" – consisted of a lengthened white field area with a Battle Flag canton. This flag too had its problems when used in military operations as, on a windless day, it could easily be mistaken for a flag of truce or surrender. Thus, in 1865, a modified version of the Stainless Banner was adopted. This final national flag of the Confederacy kept the Battle Flag canton, but shortened the white field and added a vertical red bar to the fly end.
Because of its depiction in the 20th-century and popular media, many people consider the rectangular battle flag design as being synonymous with "the Confederate Flag", even though most were square, and none were ever adopted as Confederate national flags. The generic version of the banner familiar today was used as the Confederate Naval Jack and the Battle Flag of the Army of Tennessee as well as other units.
States and flags
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"|- style="vertical-align: top;"
! scope="col" | Member State
! scope="col" | Flag
! scope="col" | Ordinance of Secession
! scope="col" | Date of Admission
! scope="col" | Under predominant
Union control
! scope="col" | Readmitted to
representation
in Congress
|-
! scope="row" | South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
|
| Feb. 8, 1861
| 1865
| July 9, 1868
|-
! scope="row" | Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
|
| Feb. 8, 1861
| 1863
| Feb. 23, 1870
|-
! scope="row" | Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
|
| Feb. 8, 1861
| 1865
| June 25, 1868
|-
! scope="row" | Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
|
| Feb. 8, 1861
| 1865
| July 13, 1868
|-
! scope="row" | Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
|
| Jan. 19, 1861
| Feb. 8, 1861
| 1865
| 1st Date July 21, 1868;
2nd Date July 15, 1870
|-
! scope="row" | Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
|
| Feb. 8, 1861
| 1863
| July 9, 1868
|-
! scope="row" | Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
|
| March 2, 1861
| 1865
| March 30, 1870
|-
! scope="row" | Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
|
| May 7, 1861
| 1865;
(1862/63 for West Virginia
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
)
| Jan. 26, 1870
|-
! scope="row" | Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
|
| May 6, 1861
| May 18, 1861
| 1864
| June 22, 1868
|-
! scope="row" | North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
|
| May 21, 1861
| 1865
| July 4, 1868
|-
! scope="row" | Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
|
| June 8, 1861
| July 2, 1861
| 1863
| July 24, 1866
|-
! scope="row" | Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
(exiled government
Missouri secession
During the American Civil War, the secession of Missouri was controversial because of the disputed status of the state of Missouri . During the war, Missouri was claimed by both the Union and the Confederacy, had two competing state governments, and sent representatives to both the United States...
)
|
| Oct. 31, 1861
| Nov. 28, 1861
| 1861
| Unionist govt. appointed by Missouri Constitutional Convention 1861
|-
! scope="row" | Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
(Russellville Convention)
|
| Dec. 10, 1861
| 1861
| Elected Union and unelected rump Confederate governments from 1861
|}
Geography
The Confederate States of America claimed a total of 2,919 miles (4,698 km) of coastline, thus a large part of its territory lay on the seacoast with level and often sandy or marshy ground. Most of the interior portion consisted of arable farmland, though much was also hilly and mountainous, and the far western territories were deserts. The lower reaches of the Mississippi RiverMississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
bisected the country, with the western half often referred to as the Trans-Mississippi
Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War
The Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War was the major military and naval operations west of the Mississippi River. The area excluded the states and territories bordering the Pacific Ocean, which formed the Pacific Coast Theater of the American Civil War.The campaign classification...
. The highest point (excluding Arizona and New Mexico) was Guadalupe Peak
Guadalupe Peak
Guadalupe Peak is the highest natural point in Texas, with an elevation of . It is located in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and is part of the Guadalupe Mountains range in southeastern New Mexico and West Texas. The mountain is about east of El Paso and about southwest of Carlsbad, New Mexico...
in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
at 8,750 feet (2,667 m).
Climate
Much of the area claimed by the Confederate States of America had a humid subtropical climateHumid subtropical climate
A humid subtropical climate is a climate zone characterized by hot, humid summers and mild to cool winters...
with mild winters and long, hot, humid summers. The climate and terrain varied from vast swamp
Swamp
A swamp is a wetland with some flooding of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water. A swamp generally has a large number of hammocks, or dry-land protrusions, covered by aquatic vegetation, or vegetation that tolerates periodical inundation. The two main types of swamp are "true" or swamp...
s (such as those in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
and Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
) to semi-arid steppes and arid deserts
Desert climate
A desert climate , also known as an arid climate, is a climate that does not meet the criteria to be classified as a polar climate, and in which precipitation is too low to sustain any vegetation at all, or at most a very scanty scrub.An area that features this climate usually experiences less than...
west of longitude 100 degrees west. The subtropical climate made winters mild but allowed infectious disease
Infectious disease
Infectious diseases, also known as communicable diseases, contagious diseases or transmissible diseases comprise clinically evident illness resulting from the infection, presence and growth of pathogenic biological agents in an individual host organism...
s to flourish. Consequently, on both sides more soldiers died from disease than were killed in combat, a fact hardly atypical of pre–World War I conflicts.
Rural/urban configuration
The area claimed by the Confederate States of America consisted overwhelmingly of rural land. Few urban areas had populations of more than 1,000 – the typical county seatCounty seat
A county seat is an administrative center, or seat of government, for a county or civil parish. The term is primarily used in the United States....
had a population of fewer than 500 people. Cities were rare. Of the twenty largest U.S. cities in the 1860 census, only New Orleans lay in Confederate territory – and the Union captured New Orleans in 1862. Only 13 Confederate-controlled cities ranked among the top 100 U.S. cities in 1860, most of them ports whose economic activities vanished or suffered severely in the Union blockade
Union blockade
The Union Blockade, or the Blockade of the South, took place between 1861 and 1865, during the American Civil War, when the Union Navy maintained a strenuous effort on the Atlantic and Gulf Coast of the Confederate States of America designed to prevent the passage of trade goods, supplies, and arms...
. The population of Richmond swelled after it became the Confederate capital, reaching an estimated 128,000 in 1864. Other large Southern cities (Baltimore, St. Louis
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
, Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
, and Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
as well as Wheeling
Wheeling, West Virginia
Wheeling is a city in Ohio and Marshall counties in the U.S. state of West Virginia; it is the county seat of Ohio County. Wheeling is the principal city of the Wheeling Metropolitan Statistical Area...
, West Virginia
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
, and Alexandria
Alexandria, Virginia
Alexandria is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of 2009, the city had a total population of 139,966. Located along the Western bank of the Potomac River, Alexandria is approximately six miles south of downtown Washington, D.C.Like the rest of northern Virginia, as well as...
, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
) never came under the control of the Confederate government.
The cities of the Confederacy included most prominently in order of size of population:
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="margin: auto;"
|-
! scope="col" | #
! scope="col" | City
! scope="col" | 1860 population
! scope="col" | 1860 U.S. rank
| Return to U.S. control
|-
! scope="row" | 1.
| New Orleans, Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 168,675
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 6
| 1862
|-
! scope="row" | 2.
| Charleston
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...
, South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 40,522
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 22
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | 3.
| Richmond
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 37,910
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 25
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | 4.
| Mobile
Mobile, Alabama
Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...
, Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 29,258
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 27
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | 5.
| Memphis
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
, Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 22,623
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 38
| 1862
|-
! scope="row" | 6.
| Savannah
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
, Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 22,619
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 41
| 1864
|-
! scope="row" | 7.
| Petersburg
Petersburg, Virginia
Petersburg is an independent city in Virginia, United States located on the Appomattox River and south of the state capital city of Richmond. The city's population was 32,420 as of 2010, predominantly of African-American ethnicity...
, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 18,266
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 50
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | 8.
| Nashville
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
, Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 16,988
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 54
| 1862
|-
! scope="row" | 9.
| Norfolk
Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. With a population of 242,803 as of the 2010 Census, it is Virginia's second-largest city behind neighboring Virginia Beach....
, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 14,620
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 61
| 1862
|-
! scope="row" | 10.
| Augusta
Augusta, Georgia
Augusta is a consolidated city in the U.S. state of Georgia, located along the Savannah River. As of the 2010 census, the Augusta–Richmond County population was 195,844 not counting the unconsolidated cities of Hephzibah and Blythe.Augusta is the principal city of the Augusta-Richmond County...
, Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 12,493
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 77
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | 11.
| Columbus
Columbus, Georgia
Columbus is a city in and the county seat of Muscogee County, Georgia, United States, with which it is consolidated. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 189,885. It is the principal city of the Columbus, Georgia metropolitan area, which, in 2009, had an estimated population of 292,795...
, Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 9,621
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 97
| 1865
|-
! scope="row" | 12.
| Atlanta, Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 9,554
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 99
| 1864
|-
! scope="row" | 13.
| Wilmington
Wilmington, North Carolina
Wilmington is a port city in and is the county seat of New Hanover County, North Carolina, United States. The population is 106,476 according to the 2010 Census, making it the eighth most populous city in the state of North Carolina...
, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 9,553
| style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em;" | 100
| 1865
|}
(See also Atlanta in the Civil War
Atlanta in the Civil War
The city of Atlanta, Georgia, was an important rail and commercial center during the American Civil War. Although relatively small in population, the city became a critical point of contention during the Atlanta Campaign in 1864 when a powerful Union army approached from Federally-held Tennessee...
, Charleston, South Carolina, in the Civil War, Nashville in the Civil War, New Orleans in the Civil War
New Orleans in the Civil War
New Orleans, in Louisiana, was the largest city in the Southern States during the American Civil War. It provided thousands of troops for the Confederate States Army, as well as several leading officers and generals...
, Wilmington, North Carolina, in the American Civil War, and Richmond in the Civil War
Richmond in the Civil War
Richmond, Virginia, served as the capital of the Confederate States of America during the vast majority of the American Civil War. It was the target of numerous attempts by the Union Army to seize possession of the capital, finally falling to the Federals in April 1865...
).
Demographics
The United States Census of 1860 gives a picture of the overall 1860 population of the areas that joined the Confederacy. Note that population-numbers exclude non-assimilated Indian tribes.{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders sortable" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"
|-
! scope="col" | State
! scope="col" | Total
Population
! scope="col" | Total
# of
Slaves
! scope="col" | Total
# of
Households
! scope="col" | Total
Free
Population
! scope="col" | Total #
Slaveholders
! scope="col" | % of Free
Population
Owning
Slaves
! scope="col" | Slaves
as % of
Population
! scope="col" | Total
free
colored
|-
! scope="row" | Alabama
| 964,201
| 435,080
| 96,603
| 529,121
| 33,730
| 6%
| 45%
| 2,690
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Arkansas
| 435,450
| 111,115
| 57,244
| 324,335
| 11,481
| 4%
| 26%
| 144
|-
! scope="row" | Florida
| 140,424
| 61,745
| 15,090
| 78,679
| 5,152
| 7%
| 44%
| 932
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Georgia
| 1,057,286
| 462,198
| 109,919
| 595,088
| 41,084
| 7%
| 44%
| 3,500
|-
! scope="row" | Louisiana
| 708,002
| 331,726
| 74,725
| 376,276
| 22,033
| 6%
| 47%
| 18,647
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Mississippi
| 791,305
| 436,631
| 63,015
| 354,674
| 30,943
| 9%
| 55%
| 773
|-
! scope="row" | North Carolina
| 992,622
| 331,059
| 125,090
| 661,563
| 34,658
| 5%
| 33%
| 30,463
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | South Carolina
| 703,708
| 402,406
| 58,642
| 301,302
| 26,701
| 9%
| 57%
| 9,914
|-
! scope="row" | Tennessee
| 1,109,801
| 275,719
| 149,335
| 834,082
| 36,844
| 4%
| 25%
| 7,300
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Texas
| 604,215
| 182,566
| 76,781
| 421,649
| 21,878
| 5%
| 30%
| 355
|-
! scope="row" | Virginia
| 1,596,318
| 490,865
| 201,523
| 1,105,453
| 52,128
| 5%
| 31%
| 58,042
|- class="sortbottom" style="background: #f9f9f9; font-weight: bold;"
! scope="row" | Total
| 9,103,332
| 3,521,110
| 1,027,967
| 5,582,222
| 316,632
| 6%
| 39%
| 132,760
|}
(Figures for Virginia include the future West Virginia.)
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"
|-
! scope="col" | Age structure
! scope="col" | 0–14 years
! scope="col" | 15–59 years
! scope="col" | 60 years and over
|-
! scope="row" | White males
| 43%
| 52%
| 4%
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | White females
| 44%
| 52%
| 4%
|-
! scope="row" | Male slaves
| 44%
| 51%
| 4%
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Female slaves
| 45%
| 51%
| 3%
|-
! scope="row" | Free black males
| 45%
| 50%
| 5%
|- style="background: #f5f5f5;"
! scope="row" | Free black females
| 40%
| 54%
| 6%
|- style="background: #f9f9f9; font-weight: bold;"
! scope="row" | Total population
| 44%
| 52%
| 4%
|}
(Rows may not total to 100% due to rounding)
In 1860 the areas that later formed the 11 Confederate States (and including the future West Virginia) had 132,760 (1.46%) free blacks. Males made up 49.2% of the total population and females 50.8% (whites: 48.60% male, 51.40% female; slaves: 50.15% male, 49.85% female; free blacks: 47.43% male, 52.57% female).
Military leaders
Military leaders of the Confederacy (with their state or country of birth and highest rank) included:- Robert E. LeeRobert E. LeeRobert Edward Lee was a career military officer who is best known for having commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War....
(VirginiaVirginiaThe Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
) – General and General-in-ChiefGeneral-in-ChiefGeneral-in-Chief has been a military rank or title in various armed forces around the world.- France :In France, General-in-Chief was first an informal title for the lieutenant-general commanding over others lieutenant-generals, or even for some marshals in charge of an army...
(1865) - Albert Sidney JohnstonAlbert Sidney JohnstonAlbert Sidney Johnston served as a general in three different armies: the Texas Army, the United States Army, and the Confederate States Army...
(KentuckyKentuckyThe Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
) – General - Joseph E. JohnstonJoseph E. JohnstonJoseph Eggleston Johnston was a career U.S. Army officer, serving with distinction in the Mexican-American War and Seminole Wars, and was also one of the most senior general officers in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War...
(Virginia) – General - Braxton BraggBraxton BraggBraxton Bragg was a career United States Army officer, and then a general in the Confederate States Army—a principal commander in the Western Theater of the American Civil War and later the military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.Bragg, a native of North Carolina, was...
(North CarolinaNorth CarolinaNorth Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
) – General - P.G.T. Beauregard (LouisianaLouisianaLouisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
) – General - Richard S. EwellRichard S. EwellRichard Stoddert Ewell was a career United States Army officer and a Confederate general during the American Civil War. He achieved fame as a senior commander under Stonewall Jackson and Robert E...
(Virginia) – Lieutenant General - Francis Marion Cockrell (Missouri) – Brigadier General for CSA. Following the Civil War, he received a Presidential Pardon and served as U.S. Senator from Missouri for 30 years.
- James LongstreetJames LongstreetJames Longstreet was one of the foremost Confederate generals of the American Civil War and the principal subordinate to General Robert E. Lee, who called him his "Old War Horse." He served under Lee as a corps commander for many of the famous battles fought by the Army of Northern Virginia in the...
(South CarolinaSouth CarolinaSouth Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
) – Lieutenant General - Thomas J. "Stonewall" JacksonStonewall Jacksonຄຽשת״ׇׂׂׂׂ֣|birth_place= Clarksburg, Virginia |death_place=Guinea Station, Virginia|placeofburial=Stonewall Jackson Memorial CemeteryLexington, Virginia|placeofburial_label= Place of burial|image=...
(Virginia now West VirginiaWest VirginiaWest Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
) – Lieutenant General - John Hunt MorganJohn Hunt MorganJohn Hunt Morgan was a Confederate general and cavalry officer in the American Civil War.Morgan is best known for Morgan's Raid when, in 1863, he and his men rode over 1,000 miles covering a region from Tennessee, up through Kentucky, into Indiana and on to southern Ohio...
(Kentucky) – Brigadier General - A.P. Hill (Virginia) – Lieutenant General
- John Bell HoodJohn Bell HoodJohn Bell Hood was a Confederate general during the American Civil War. Hood had a reputation for bravery and aggressiveness that sometimes bordered on recklessness...
(Kentucky) – Lieutenant General (temporary General) - Wade Hampton IIIWade Hampton IIIWade Hampton III was a Confederate cavalry leader during the American Civil War and afterward a politician from South Carolina, serving as its 77th Governor and as a U.S...
(South Carolina) – Lieutenant General
- Nathan Bedford ForrestNathan Bedford ForrestNathan Bedford Forrest was a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He is remembered both as a self-educated, innovative cavalry leader during the war and as a leading southern advocate in the postwar years...
(TennesseeTennesseeTennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
) – Lieutenant General - John Singleton Mosby, the "Grey Ghost of the Confederacy" (Virginia) – Colonel
- J.E.B. StuartJ.E.B. StuartJames Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart was a U.S. Army officer from Virginia and a Confederate States Army general during the American Civil War. He was known to his friends as "Jeb", from the initials of his given names. Stuart was a cavalry commander known for his mastery of reconnaissance and the use...
(Virginia) – Major General - Edward Porter AlexanderEdward Porter AlexanderEdward Porter Alexander was an engineer, an officer in the U.S. Army, a Confederate general in the American Civil War, and later a railroad executive, planter, and author....
(GeorgiaGeorgia (U.S. state)Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
) – Brigadier General - Franklin BuchananFranklin BuchananFranklin Buchanan was an officer in the United States Navy who became an admiral in the Confederate Navy during the American Civil War, and commanded the ironclad CSS Virginia.-Early life:...
(MarylandMarylandMaryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
) – AdmiralAdmiralAdmiral is the rank, or part of the name of the ranks, of the highest naval officers. It is usually considered a full admiral and above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet . It is usually abbreviated to "Adm" or "ADM"... - Raphael SemmesRaphael SemmesFor other uses, see Semmes .Raphael Semmes was an officer in the United States Navy from 1826 - 1860 and the Confederate States Navy from 1860 - 1865. During the American Civil War he was captain of the famous commerce raider CSS Alabama, taking a record sixty-nine prizes...
(Maryland) – Rear AdmiralRear admiral (United States)Rear admiral is a naval commissioned officer rank above that of a commodore and captain, and below that of a vice admiral. The uniformed services of the United States are unique in having two grades of rear admirals.- Rear admiral :... - Stand WatieStand WatieStand Watie , also known as Standhope Uwatie, Degataga , meaning “stand firm”), and Isaac S. Watie, was a leader of the Cherokee Nation and a brigadier general of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War...
(Georgia) – Brigadier General (last to surrender) - Leonidas PolkLeonidas PolkLeonidas Polk was a Confederate general in the American Civil War who was once a planter in Maury County, Tennessee, and a second cousin of President James K. Polk...
(North Carolina) – Lieutenant General - Sterling PriceSterling PriceSterling Price was a lawyer, planter, and politician from the U.S. state of Missouri, who served as the 11th Governor of the state from 1853 to 1857. He also served as a United States Army brigadier general during the Mexican-American War, and a Confederate Army major general in the American Civil...
(Missouri) – Major General - Jubal Anderson EarlyJubal Anderson EarlyJubal Anderson Early was a lawyer and Confederate general in the American Civil War. He served under Stonewall Jackson and then Robert E. Lee for almost the entire war, rising from regimental command to lieutenant general and the command of an infantry corps in the Army of Northern Virginia...
(Virginia) – Lieutenant General - Richard TaylorRichard Taylor (general)Richard Taylor was a Confederate general in the American Civil War. He was the son of United States President Zachary Taylor and First Lady Margaret Taylor.-Early life:...
(Kentucky) – Lieutenant General (Son of U.S. President Zachary TaylorZachary TaylorZachary Taylor was the 12th President of the United States and an American military leader. Initially uninterested in politics, Taylor nonetheless ran as a Whig in the 1848 presidential election, defeating Lewis Cass...
) - Stephen Dodson RamseurStephen Dodson RamseurStephen Dodson Ramseur was one of the youngest Confederate generals in the American Civil War. He was mortally wounded in battle at the Battle of Cedar Creek in the Shenandoah Valley.-Early life:...
(North Carolina) – Major General - Camille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de PolignacCamille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de PolignacCamille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de Polignac was a French nobleman, scholar and soldier who joined the Confederate States Army at the outbreak of the American Civil War and became major general before the end of the war...
– (FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
) Major General - John Austin Wharton (Tennessee) – Major General
- Thomas L. RosserThomas L. RosserThomas Lafayette Rosser was a Confederate general during the American Civil War, and later an officer in the Spanish American War and railroad construction engineer. A favorite of J.E.B...
(Virginia) – Major General
- Patrick CleburnePatrick CleburnePatrick Ronayne Cleburne was an Irish American soldier, best known for his service in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, where he rose to the rank of major general....
(IrelandIrelandIreland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
) – Major General - William N. PendletonWilliam N. PendletonWilliam Nelson Pendleton was an American teacher, Episcopal priest, and soldier. He served as a Confederate general during the American Civil War, noted for his position as Gen. Robert E. Lee's chief of artillery for most of the conflict...
(Virginia) – Brigadier General - Heros von BorckeHeros von BorckeJohann August Heinrich Heros von Borcke was a German American cavalry officer in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War and in the Prussian Army during the Austro-Prussian War.-Biography:...
(PrussiaPrussiaPrussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
) – Lieutenant Colonel
See also
- Conclusion of the American Civil WarConclusion of the American Civil WarThis is a timeline of the conclusion of the American Civil War which includes important battles, skirmishes, raids and other events of 1865. These led to additional Confederate surrenders, key Confederate captures, and disbandments of Confederate military units that occurred after Gen. Robert E...
- Confederate Post Office
- Confederate war financeConfederate war financeConfederate war finance refers to the various means, fiscal and monetary, through which the Confederate States of America financed their war effort during the American Civil War. As the war lasted for virtually the entire existence of the nation, it dominated national finance.Early on in the war,...
- Confederate SealConfederate SealThe Great Seal of the Confederate States was the official seal of the government of the Confederate States of America, which consisted of eleven states that voted to secede from the United States, leading to the American Civil War....
- History of the Southern United StatesHistory of the Southern United StatesThe history of the Southern United States reaches back hundreds of years and includes the Mississippian people, well known for their mound building. European history in the region began in the very earliest days of the exploration and colonization of North America...
- Prisoner of war prisons and camps
- Postage stamps and postal history of the Confederate StatesPostage stamps and postal history of the Confederate StatesThe postage stamps and postal system of the Confederate States of America carried the mail of the Confederacy for a brief period in American history. Early in 1861 when South Carolina territory no longer considered itself part of the Union and demanded that the U.S. Army abandon Fort Sumter, plans...
- Golden Circle (proposed country)
- Confederate Patent OfficeConfederate Patent OfficeThe Confederate Patent Office was the agency of the Confederate States of America charged with issuing patents on inventions. The Chief Clerk during its entire existence was Rufus R...
- Confederate coloniesConfederate coloniesConfederate colonies were made up of emigrants from the Confederate States of America who fled the United States after the Union won the American Civil War . They settled in many Latin American countries like Brazil and Mexico.-Background:...
- ConfederadosConfederadosThe Confederados are an ethnic sub-group in Brazil descended from some 10,000 Confederate Americans who immigrated chiefly to the area of the city of São Paulo, Brazil after the American Civil War...
- For the 2004 film: C.S.A.: The Confederate States of AmericaC.S.A.: The Confederate States of AmericaC.S.A.: The Confederate States of America is a 2004 mockumentary directed by Kevin Willmott. It is a fictional "tongue-in-cheek" account of an alternate history, in which the Confederates won the American Civil War, establishing the new Confederate States of America...
State studies
- Ayers, Edward L. and others. Crucible of the Civil War: Virginia from Secession to Commemoration (2008)
- Dollar, Kent, and others. Sister States, Enemy States: The Civil War in Kentucky and Tennessee (2009) excerpt and text search
- Fleming, Walter Lynwood. Civil war and reconstruction in Alabama (1905); 815 pages online edition
- Inscoe, John C. The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War (2003) excerpt and text search
- Lee, Edward J. and Ron Chepesiuk, eds. South Carolina in the Civil War: The Confederate Experience in Letters and Diaries (2004), primary sources
- Smith, Timothy B. Mississippi in the Civil War: The Home Front (University Press of Mississippi, 2010) 265 pages; Examines the declining morale of Mississippians as they witnessed extensive destruction and came to see victory as increasingly improbable
- Wallenstein, Peter and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, eds. Virginia's Civil War (2009)
Economic and social history
- Bernath, Michael T. Confederate Minds: The Struggle for Intellectual Independence in the Civil War South (University of North Carolina Press; 2010) 412 pages. Examines the efforts of writers, editors, and other "cultural nationalists" to free the South from the dependence on Northern print culture and educational systems.
- Black, Robert C., III. The Railroads of the Confederacy, 1988.
- Bonner, Michael Brem. "Expedient Corporatism and Confederate Political Economy," Civil War History, 56 (March 2010), 33–65.
- Clinton, Catherine, and Silber, Nina, eds. Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War, 1992
- Dabney, Virginius Richmond: The Story of a City. Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 1990 ISBN 0-8139-1274-1
- Faust, Drew Gilpin Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, 1996
- Grimsley, Mark The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865, 1995
- Lentz, Perry Carlton Our Missing Epic: A Study in the Novels about the American Civil War, 1970
- Massey, Mary Elizabeth Bonnet Brigades: American Women and the Civil War, 1966
- Massey, Mary Elizabeth Refugee Life in the Confederacy, 1964
- Rable, George C. Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism, 1989
- Ramsdell, Charles. Behind the Lines in the Southern Confederacy, 1994.
- Riggs, David F. "Robert Young Conrad and the Ordeal of Secession."The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 86, No. 3 (July 1978), pp. 259–274.
- Roark, James L. Masters without Slaves: Southern Planters in the Civil War and Reconstruction, 1977.
- Rubin, Anne Sarah. A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861–1868, 2005 A cultural study of Confederates' self images
- Thomas, Emory M. The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience, 1992
- Wallenstein, Peter, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, eds. Virginia's Civil War (2008) excerpt and text search
- Wiley, Bell Irwin Confederate Women, 1975
- Wiley, Bell Irwin The Plain People of the Confederacy, 1944
- Woods, James M. Rebellion and Realignment:Arkansas's Road to Secession. (1987)
- Woodward, C. Vann, ed. Mary Chesnut's Civil War, 1981
Politics
- Alexander, Thomas B., and Beringer, Richard E. The Anatomy of the Confederate Congress: A Study of the Influences of Member Characteristics on Legislative Voting Behavior, 1861–1865, (1972)
- Boritt, Gabor S., and others., Why the Confederacy Lost, (1992)
- Cooper, William J, Jefferson Davis, American (2000), standard biography
- Downing, David C. A South Divided: Portraits of Dissent in the Confederacy. (2007). ISBN 978-1-58182-587-9
- Faust, Drew Gilpin. The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South. (1988)
- Rembert, W. Patrick Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet (1944).
- Williams, William M. Justice in Grey: A History of the Judicial System of the Confederate States of America (1941)
- Yearns, Wilfred Buck The Confederate Congress (1960)
Foreign affairs
- Blumenthal, Henry. "Confederate Diplomacy: Popular Notions and International Realities," Journal of Southern History, Vol. 32, No. 2 (May, 1966), pp. 151–171 in JSTOR
- Daddysman, James W. The Matamoros Trade: Confederate Commerce, Diplomacy, and Intrigue. (1984)
- Foreman, Amanda. A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (2011) especially on Brits inside the Confederacy; excerpt and text search
- Hubbard, Charles M. The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy (1998)
- Jones, Howard. Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations (2009) excerpt and text search
- Merli, Frank J. The Alabama, British Neutrality, and the American Civil War (2004). 225 pp.
- Owsley, Frank. King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America (2nd ed. 1959)
Primary sources
- Carter, Susan B., ed. The Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition (5 vols), 2006
- Commager, Henry Steele, ed. The Blue and the Gray, the Story of the Civil War as Told By Participants (2 vol.; 1950 and many reprints)
- Davis, Jefferson, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (2 vols), 1881.
- Harwell, Richard B., The Confederate Reader (1957)
- Jones, John B. A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, edited by Howard Swiggert, [1935] 1993. 2 vols.
- Richardson, James D., ed. A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, Including the Diplomatic Correspondence 1861–1865, 2 volumes, 1906.
- Yearns, W. Buck and Barret, John G.,eds. North Carolina Civil War Documentary, 1980.
- Confederate official government documents major online collection of complete texts in HTML format, from University of North CarolinaUniversity of North CarolinaChartered in 1789, the University of North Carolina was one of the first public universities in the United States and the only one to graduate students in the eighteenth century...
- Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865 (7 vols), 1904. Available online at the Library of CongressLibrary of CongressThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
External links
- Confederate offices Index of Politicians by Office Held or Sought
- Civil War Research & Discussion Group -*Confederate States of Am. Army and Navy Uniforms, 1861
- The Countryman, 1862–1866, published weekly by Turnwold, Ga., edited by J.A. Turner
- The Federal and the Confederate Constitution Compared
- Confederate Currency
- Confederate Postage Stamps
- Photographs of the original Confederate Constitution and other Civil War documents owned by the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia Libraries.
- Photographic History of the Civil War, 10 vols., 1912.
- DocSouth: Documenting the American South – numerous online text, image, and audio collections.
- Civil War records at the National Archives at Atlanta- includes Confederate records, such as Confederate court documents, Confederate records collected by the U.S. War Department during the Civil War and Confederate records collected by the Treasury Department during Civil War